She entered inside the surprisingly roomy skill chamber once she paid the price. Yola was standing outside the chamber, a similar looking blocky console that Val had back when she became a Journeyman sitting in front of her.

She would honestly like to ask questions about how all this worked, at least for Zeke's sake, but she was too nervous to keep stalling for more time. She would just get it over with, hoping that her skill fragments would somehow offset the need to have a higher Meditation skill.

She looked back at the young woman, her bright smile on her face as she pushed what felt to Mikella's ears buttons on the console as the chamber began to light up with massive torrents of energy running through it, at least through her Mana Manipulation skill.

"Hey, so… Do I have to get naked for this?" Mikella asked, hoping against hope that this wasn't necessary.

"Oh gods, no," Yola giggled, waving off her concerns. "That's only for the Journeyman evolution requiring your whole body. You're good. Though, that question proved just how recent it was for you to evolve into Journeyman, isn't it?"

"Haha, yeah…" She chuckled dryly, leaving it at that as she was just thankful she didn't have to get naked in an entirely unfamiliar environment. Still, she breathed heavily as she asked again. "So, what do I do, specifically?"

"Stay inside the chamber and try to stay still," Yola answered, the mirth in her tone vanishing as solemnity took place. "Then focus inward while the chamber is active. Focus on the image of your skills and make them as clear as possible. Then, pour in your willpower into creating a new skill out of the skills you want to fuse. It's a subjective experience, at least I heard from those who used it, so it's different for everybody. In the end, try to stay calm and focus only on your skills–understand?"

Mikella nodded, gripping her fingers as the chamber suddenly began charging. The walls rumbled all of a sudden, then a whirring sound echoed all around her. For someone who relied heavily in her instincts, that made her want to grasp her weapon, but she focused on staying calm as Yola said.

"I will close the chamber. If it is open, the energy inside the chamber would leak out. I will stay here for as long as I'm needed until you finish your skill fusion just to be safe, but remember–this is all on you. Can you handle this?"

She wondered if Yola was trying to console the girl who was clearly in over her head doing something like this. She should've been offended or something, but she knew she was glad to have someone trying to comfort her. Without Zeke by her side, she did feel a bit uncomfortable doing something like this, but she can't expect him to hold her hand forever.

She nodded resolutely. "Yes. Go right ahead."

"Closing the chamber now."

Yola simply said, then the doors to the chamber sealed tightly shut. Even if Mikella poured in all of her energy into her attack, she wouldn't be able to scratch this clearly strong material used for the chamber.

She rolled her shoulders, feeling the tense atmosphere the whirring chamber was putting off as the energy was circularing all around her. Thanks to her skill, she could practically feel the mana condensing all around her, practically choking the normal air. For anyone below Journeyman, this would clearly be a dangerous environment.

Instead, she felt the mana enriching her somehow, slowly pouring into her pores of her skin as she closed her eyes. She felt something overcoming her, but it wasn't sleep making her eyelids heavy. It was something more profound.

Following Yola's words, she quickly sat down, crossed her legs, and went into her meditation position. There, she remained perfectly still as she let the foreign mana around her fill her, leaving her in a dense mental state that she had never reached before.

…..

Her eyes opened up, and what she found was just nothing. Nothing but the white void that she recalled seeing so very long ago, back during the biodome when she first met Zoan.

She also recalled Zeke seeing this exact thing when he dove into Val's core to kick Alex's ass out of her conscious to stop her from becoming a zombie. In other words, this was some weird mental scape thing that was inside of someone's inner self.

So, like a world inside the mind of a person. In other words, her own inner world.

She stood up, forgetting that she wasn't supposed to move, but she had a feeling that this wasn't her real body. For one thing, she didn't even feel her clothes on her body, but she looked down to see her figure donning the same armored outfit she always wore.

She even put her hands onto her body, only finding… nothing. Not a real body, but she felt that her body was there. It was weird.

She understood then that this was all corporeal. Now that she had a deeper look into this void scape, it was surprisingly compact with meaning, and perhaps just a step closer to the system itself.

She noticed something glowing in the far distance, and considering that there was nothing else around her, she approached it to see for herself.

Though rather than walking over to the glowing item, the item just got to her instead. She was surprised at first, but then realized that since this was inside of her mind, she didn't necessarily have to walk.

Looking down, she saw the glowing item more closely. It was bright–very bright, having an intense light blue color that seemed strange in her vision. Tilting her head, she realized something similar about this skill.

A strange memory of Val putting her hand on the ground, causing the earth beneath to scatter from the power of her energy flow. She realized then that his skill, the glowing orb-like object, was actually the physical representation of her highest leveled General Skill; Kinetic Manipulation.

Now that she had a closer look, despite it being a light blue, there were hints of a strong green resting inside, the usual color for kinetic energy. Then, she turned to the side to find another, less slightly glowing light-blue orb. Unlike Kinetic Manipulation, this was entirely blue all over, perhaps even a dark blue than what the lighter blue surrounding it represent.

It was Mana Manipulation. Now that she saw how these skills looked, she spun around, finding that there were more glowing objects now surrounding her. These were her General Skills.

There were two distinct skills that were glowing orbs, but felt different than what her perception skills meant. Those were probably Pain Resistance and Meditation, with one being a stronger blue than Mana Manipulation, and the other being a rather weak brownish coloring.

Now she understood the colors behind the glow–they represented the rarities of the skill itself. Meditation has only just advanced to Uncommon at Level 1, hence why the glow is so much weaker than the other skills, and the brownish coloring being less vibrant than the blue skills surrounding her.

Once again, despite getting rid of the Common rarity tag, seeing that brownish coloring reminding her sub-par quality made her feel that this skill was something she needed to grow as soon as possible. It was becoming a pain to see it after this long in this world.

She shook off the rising complaints of the skill, leaving it for later. She was certain she didn't have much time in this place for her to keep wandering about. She focused instead on the skills she wanted to see.

After carefully glancing at the glowing objects around her, she spotted three more skills outside of the usual cluster of skills. One was light blue, but another was a deep shade of purple, and the last one was a vibrant, almost golden color.

Respectively, Warp Jump, Acrobatics, and finally Dragon Eyes. From brown, to light blue, to deep purple, and then to vibrant yellow or gold.

That was how the color rarity palette showed, so she at least knew what to look out for when it came to rarities.

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She could probably try to look for her other skills, but she was certain Class Skills were off limits, and her Race skill certainly didn't seem possible to fuse at all, especially since it was still at a low level. Her Title Skills were nowhere to be found, so only the skills she actively used and easily learned can be fused.

Finally taking a good grasp of her skill lineup, she willed her consciousness to move the ones she wanted forward. In a single shift of perspective, five General Skills showed up in front of her.

Out of all the skills, one singular skill was the biggest and shone the brightest, being none other than her favorite Mastery Skill, Sword Mastery. The object showed an incredible looking sword, the shape reminding her of her usual favorite longsword design. If she had to guess, if Piker's Sword Mastery was here, it would look like a larger two-handed broadsword. The other four were Axe Mastery, Spear Mastery, Bow Mastery, and Hammer Mastery, each one showing their weapon's shape according to her liking.

Despite their weaker glow compared to Sword Mastery, the shape was still very much similar to the weapons she usually used. More than that, despite having the same skill rarity, every weapon other than the sword was a bit fuzzy, as though she wasn't quite clear on their image. The sword was the only one being more pronounced, which made Mikella realize that the skill had a lot more history than just what their rarity and level showed.

Now came the difficult question; How is she going to fuse them?

She had every intention of learning every weapon skill she can think of, then fusing them all together to make one powerful skill. Ever since she learned the concept of fusing skills, this was her goal. But as time passed, her goal became loftier, almost unattainable.

Now that she was here at the final step, she hesitated. However, she recalled the times she spoke to Zeke animatedly about her skill fusion, and what kind of skill she wanted. But even now, she really had no clue on what she really wanted.

She wanted a powerful skill to help her in combat, but she wasn't sure on what exactly the kind of skill she needed. But Zeke's words echoed in her mind, bringing her peace that she didn't know she needed.

"Rather than specifics, I think you should just focus on what makes you feel like it's worth it. It doesn't have to be any specific weapon, just something that you like. It could even be a concept, something that doesn't physically exist but instead feel with all your heart."

Zeke admitted that he was just talking out of his ass on that one, not really knowing how the skill fusion worked himself. But that didn't mean he was just joking around either.

And somehow she really liked that idea. If she can't really think of some super mega-weapon to use, she can just think of something close to that, something that screams 'Mikella Ashton'.

Now that she had a better thought on that concept, she brought forth another skill, putting it over the other skills with the same intense glow and color as Sword Mastery; Lightning Mastery.

It was just a jumble of electricity constantly sparking against each other, almost like seeing the inside of a thundercloud. It was a magic skill she had no intention of learning, but instead gained from experimenting with her attunement back at the biodome. With this skill, she had better control over her lightning, and can even cast lightning spells like how actual mages do. Granted, her low Intelligence stat made it impossible for her to only use lightning magic rather than just striking with her weapons, but there were plenty of benefits of shocking her enemies and paralyzing them from the potency of electricity running through their veins.

She remembered her past, knowing exactly how she got into using weapons in the first place. She recognized the steps she took throughout her path, eventually taking on lightning as her attunement, and using everything she had learned to get her up to this point. In the end, it was clear–

She wanted to use Lightning Mastery on top of her weapon skills. It was outside of her usual plans, but it was something that felt right to her. Though that still didn't help answering on how to fuse her skills in the first place.

Now that she thought about it, does the order count? There were a lot of skills to fuse, and she wanted to make sure that the skill was at least a physical-based one to improve her combat skills and weapon versatility.

The wheels in her head spun as an idea slowly formed in her mind. Then with a thought, she made it into a reality. The six skills spun together into a tight circle formation, spinning around with no added difficulty.

Slowly, the four weapon mastery skills lowered themselves to the bottom of her vision, spinning clockwise with each other. Then she placed the Lightning Mastery slightly above the spinning skill circle, letting it float there.

Finally, she placed Sword Mastery right above the Lightning Mastery, then… she paused. This didn't make sense. Aesthetically, this wouldn't work.

So she shifted the positions once again. Bow Mastery was left on the very bottom. Axe, Spear, and Hammer Mastery stood side by side on top of the Bow, then she placed Lightning Mastery right above the middle, the Spear Mastery. Then finally, Sword Mastery on top of that.

In her mind, Sword Mastery is her main skill. But every other skill will become the foundation to make that skill even stronger, better than it was before. And to connect it all together, Lightning Mastery is the catalyst to bring that power into reality.

Chuckling to herself, she picked up skill with her hand. Her palm rested on where the Bow Mastery Skill was at, then pointed with the Sword Mastery as the tip towards a random direction.

A sword-shaped Skill. Honestly, she was just joking around at this point, but it fit surprisingly well. After taking another glance at it, she was stunned that all the skills just meshed together, becoming an actual ethereal-like longsword in her hand.

Lightning sparked across the blade, and after swinging it around, she felt it–this was right. This was perfect.

Then everything went white.

…..

"Congratulations on a successful skill fusion!" A cheery voice echoed out the moment the doors to the chamber slowly opened, sliding into the metal structure around her.

Mikella had to take a double take. For a moment, she forgot where she was, but after seeing Yola's cheerful smile as she stepped forward to help her, she realized she was back at the skill chamber, gladly taking on Yola's hand to get out. She still felt a little woozy, the mana in the chamber still messing with her head a little, but otherwise, she was completely fine.

"Did it actually work?" Mikella asked, her voice slightly strange to her ears before returning to her proper senses.

"Considering that the console told me that there was a change in your skill set and no problems came about, it should be a success," Yola explained. "In the end, only you can tell. So, what did you gain? Was it good?"

Clearly, Yola was excited to hear about Mikella's new skill, especially since she fused six whole skills into it. Then she paused.

"Oh… I actually fused six skills, not just my weapon mastery skills," She blurted out.

"What?!" Yola took a step back in surprise. "But I thought you said you were going to fuse your weapon skills?"

"I did… am I in trouble for fusing more skills than what I told you?"

"You're not really in trouble. It actually makes no difference if you added in one more skill or not on my end. What mattered is that you would have increased the difficulty of the fusion some more. But considering it was still a success, that's actually more incredible. It must be a really good skill if it still worked out!"

"Oh, right…" Mikella was still a bit off, but more about how difficult Yola made it sound. It certainly didn't feel difficult, at least she thought it wasn't.

But clearly, she had no more time to be wasting. Poor Yola was practically jittering to hear her answer, but wanted to be polite to give Mikella time to adjust. She smiled, opening up the several notifications that were blinking and giving her a headache.

What she read made her really re-think what she did.

Skill Fusion has commenced.

You have chosen the skills Sword Mastery (R), Axe Mastery (R), Spear Mastery (R), Bow Mastery (R), Hammer Mastery (R), and Lightning Mastery (R) to fuse together.

The aforementioned skills have been lost into the skill fusion. You will still retain the stat bonuses you have acquired throughout the progress of the lost skills.

General Skill learned: Tempest Dance Mastery

…..

Tempest Dance Mastery (Mythic), Level 1 You become the tempest itself. The combat style you love, the weapons you cherish, and the might of lightning you control, has fused together to become a sword that was more than a sword. This skill represents everything you bring into battle, increasing according to the level of the skill and the current stats across the board.

*****

New Title available:

Mythical: You have created a Mythic Skill that is far beyond your current state. No mountain is too high, no valley is too low, and no river is too wide to keep you from getting to your goal.

You have gained +10 STR from your title. You have gained +10 DEX from your title. You have gained +10 INT from your title. You have gained +10 SPI from your title. You have gained +10 VIT from your title. You have gained +10 END from your title.

Title Skill attained: To the Top

…..

To the Top (Title), Level 1 (Maxed)

You are just not satisfied at being decent. You want to be the best. Every skill you possess is stronger than the level suggested by 1%.

Mikella read the prompts multiple times, trying to comprehend the staggering amount of power and meaning from the words displayed. However, there was only one thing circulating in her mind.

...Did the system just pull out an old song lyric from my world?

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