Chapter 4: Adventure Through The Hollow Woods

  After testing a couple of other skills, Joey headed up to fall asleep. Even though he was asleep he was still fully conscious. He had decided that while he was asleep would be the best time to check out his mental skills. Starting with his Dream World skill. Entering the dream world, it was a completely white void. Thinking about Joey understood why. Usually, dreams were conjurations of the subconscious, so when he activated the skill, he did it consciously, so he needed to consciously create the world.

  Once he understood that, he started to design the world after his house. It was finished quickly thanks to his Memory Library skill, and he even got a skill related to it.

  Thanks to his evolved system interfacing he could now bring up skills individually which saved him a headache. It was actually very similar to his brother's skill, Mental Picturization. It allowed him to instantly form images and blueprints in his mind and store them away permanently which in a roundabout way gave him a form of eidetic memory.

  Trying to see what he could in the dream, he realized he couldn't do much. He couldn't train his physical and sensory skills in the dream, but maybe in the future. Training his mental skills was the only thing he could do, but he didn't feel the mental exhaustion was worth it considering that he could train them constantly in real life. So, he'll just check on one of them and go to sleep.

  He decided to check out his Multi-Consciousness. Focusing on it he realized he didn’t have 2 consciousnesses as you would expect but 2 and a half. He immediately realized that it was his subconscious and investigated it to see what it was busy with.

  Looking into it he realized it was much busier than even he was right now. Something most people didn't realize was that the subconscious handled far more than they would expect. It handled body processes like breathing, heartbeat and so much more. Then it handled the learned skills. Another thing people didn't realize was that it controlled learned skills like walking and language. When you walk, the only thing your conscious mind does is flip a switch and occasionally make adjustments, leaving everything else to the subconscious.

  He decided not to touch it because if he somehow messed it up, he would be stuck manually controlling his heartbeat and breathing. Putting it away he focused on the extra one he has. Unlike what he expected, it didn't have thoughts or anything at all, in fact, it was blank. He assigned it a task to see what it would do, the task being to regulate his Perfect Circulation. Instead of controlling and managing it as he expected, it fused with the skill. In fact, he felt the skill worked much better after the fusion. Ignoring the level-up notifications for both skills. He thought about how he could use this. Reversing the fusion, he then fused it with his Developmental Planning skill. Once again, he was surprised as instead of managing the skill, it developed a pseudo-will. For a second, he was worried that he would get a split personality, but that worry was crushed when the fusion was done.

  What was formed was less of a personality and more of the skill given the ability to express some thoughts. Currently, it was telling him that he should go looking for some businesses to invest in using his premonition skill to gain resources and then spend a while studying and the such to grind up his knowledge skills. Deciding to look into it later, he started to see what happens with different skills.

  It wouldn't even fuse with active skills like Blood Armor because from what he could gather there wasn't anything for it to do there, while with sensory skills like 6 senses, it would improve the processing of information. When he fused it with premonition it was an odd feeling, it was like the skill was commenting on his choices.

  It was like how when watching a horror movie, you would say 'No, don't go and investigate the weird groaning coming from the basement alone you idiot!' and right now it was saying he should sleep since he's going on an adventure tomorrow. He had tried fusing it with his Skill Sagacity skill, but it was rejected as he expected because it seemed like the skill already had its own will. Before he let himself truly fall asleep, he fused one consciousness with his Premonition skill and the other new one with his 6 Senses skill.

  Waking up the next day, Joey rubbed his bruised shoulder while still in bed. Apparently, his brother hadn't found the joke as funny as he did and decided to get back at him. Of course, he wasn't really bothered by the bruise and even if he was, he could just cancel out the pain using his sense injuries skill. The reason he wasn't using it was because of a quote he had once read that resonated with him. 'To live is to experience. It is about falling in love and laughing as much as it is about being hurt and crying.'

  Ignoring his surprisingly wise thoughts, he had some exciting plans today with his friends. The last time he had seen them was before yesterday when they were on their way to Hollow Woods. They had postponed their plans until today so that they could have him join them. Hollow Woods used to be a normal forest at the start of Initialization, but it all changed due to the formation of a natural treasure at the center. The presence of the natural treasure was what changed the surroundings into something else. The treasure was called the Hollow Oak, its affinity being a composite affinity called Hollow Winds.

  Composite affinities and composite mana were basically just a mixture of different types of mana or a single type of mana with an intent. For example, shadow affinity was darkness mana with the goal of stealth in mind and even sun affinity was a mixture of star, fire, light, and life with its own intent in place. Hollow Winds was a mixture of wind (75%), darkness(23%), and space(2%) with the intent of it being empty and unfelt. It's color was grayish light green.

  Back to the topic, the Hollow Oak as the cause of all this change was left there deliberately by the government so that people who've just awakened can train. They even used some spells and skills on the area to divide it into zones where only monsters of the corresponding level exist. As you would expect, the reason they're going there was to practice their combat skills.

  Some would call it suicidal for a party of four entirely formed of people who've only been awakened for a little more than a month and one person who still hasn't even awakened to enter the forest, and they'd be right. Yet, Joey and his friends still planned to go since they each had their survival methods.

  Getting out of bed, he instantly wore his clothes using his Equip skill and skipped going to the shower by using his Expulsion skill by pushing out everything through his hands and the washing them. Thinking about how easy skills were making his life, he grabbed a piece of play dough off of his desk using telekinesis and walked out of his room. Going down the stairs while playing with the playdough his train of thought was interrupted by a notification.

  Pulling up the skill description.

  'This has some potential.' The reason he thought so, is that an often issue among crafter-type classes is when the materials are higher leveled than them or if the materials are too hard so they can't use them. An evolved version of this skill would let him use materials above his level and maybe even let him shape things that weren't meant to be shaped like mana crystals and such. Adding it to the ever-growing list of things to check out later, he decided to play with the playdough for the rest of the day whenever he could.

  After eating a bunch of food and putting a lot of stuff they might need like potions, camping equipment, food, and such into his storage skill. He made his way toward where they agreed to meet while extending bone claws out of the tips of his fingers via the use of the Body Growth and Control skill. He had thought that he would get a skill called Bone Claws, but he eventually just concluded that an effect achieved entirely by reliance on another skill doesn't qualify to gain a skill of its own.

  Finding that he was the first one here thanks to his walking skill, he decided to pass the time while waiting by trying out the aura part of his 6 Senses skill for the first time. When he activated the skill, he was immediately disoriented by the new stimulus. It was like being blind your whole life and then suddenly gaining sight. His brain didn't know how to process the new information, so he just decided not to. Leaving it all to the consciousness assigned to the skill, he just waited for it to be able to process the information and send it to him.

  Five minutes later, it was done and when he looked around, he noticed that everything and everyone was covered by a layer of color that didn't affect his sight. Every layer was unique and ever-changing from what he could see. He could vaguely tell from them someone's strength, age, affinities, and current emotions. Looking at a tree's aura he could tell that its affinity was plant and that it was two to three and a half years old. Thinking it was interesting he left it on but left it to the split consciousness to manage.

  Turning his attention to his approaching friends, they quickly greeted each other and started moving in the direction of Hollow Woods. The reason for their haste is that the place becomes 10 times as dangerous at night. Eventually arriving at the checkpoint to enter the forest, they handed the guard their IDs while ignoring the looks he was giving them. He looked like he was going to say something but then just sighed and shook his head. The guard had seen too many new awakeners overestimate themselves just to die and no matter how many times he warns them they never listened to his advice.

  After entering the forest, the first thing they did was get in formation. They had Joey (He told them vague details about his skill) and Yoshi in the front because they were the only ones with close combat abilities. Then, they had Mark in the middle operating his 'spider-drones' as he called them to scout ahead. Finally, they had Zane in the back because he was their only range attacker.

  As they walked through the forest, everyone was silent partly because they didn't want to attract animals but mostly out of nervousness. It had to be remembered that no matter how much they trained and mentally prepared themselves, this was still their first time in the field. The only people who could remain calm in a situation like this were arrogant fools who thought Talent + Training= Instant Win. The calmest person among them was Joey, but only thanks to his Steady skill and the fact that he was squishing the playdough as though it was a stress ball. He maxed out the shaping skill and the Multi-Consciousness skill had also gotten a level. He put the new consciousness into his Analysis skill immediately because his premonition skill was telling him any other choice was the wrong one for now.

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  They continued like that for a while until they realized that they were being followed by a pack of Hollow Wolves. They were extremely thin to the point that they looked as though they were starving to death, and had grayish-green fur, and a tad of black fur on their ears. The group hadn't noticed that were being followed until Joey's aura perception and analysis skills noticed them. The only reason they managed to hide that long from the aura skill was that the entire place had Hollow aura so his inexperience with the skill had made him unable to notice the differences. Luckily, his newly conscious Analysis skill had been able to sort through the auras.

  Now, most would assume that the analysis skill was just some form of identify, but they would be wrong. It, as its name and the description, said, helped in the analysis of information. Subtle things that most would ignore or just treat as ordinary would be broken down by the skill to gain facts. It could tell from someone's demeanor whether they were an assassin type or a defender type and it could tell what weapon a warrior type wielded from the position of the callouses on his hands.

  Using it with aura sensing made it so much easier to understand what each change in the aura meant and it also helped in filtering through the aura of the trees to find out that they were being followed by a pack of wolves. He whispered to them a plan while ignoring the fact that he got two skills called whispering and leading. After they made a few suggestions and changed some aspects of the plan they enacted it.

  Joey went out of the wolves' view then used his stealth skill and slipped away. He then used his parkour skill to climb a tree and started moving towards the wolf's position by leaping from tree to tree. After making sure he was above the strongest one of them from what he could tell and was on the highest branch of the tallest tree, he started to get ready.

  He formed a small dagger and armor all out of his bones then used his Calculations, Analysis, and Sense Properties skills to calculate the best way to do this. After that, he activated and pushed his Over Limit, surprise, and Fighting skills to the max. Then he jumped downward in a dive with the hand holding the dagger pointed in front of him. While doing so he aimed right at the back of its head, even gaining a skill related to targeting weak points.

  While still in mid-air he used his Double Jump 3 times while aiming down boosting his speed a lot. Then he used his Telekinesis and Enforce Will skills on his own body to move even faster. Finally, he threw the dagger downwards pushing all his momentum onto it while using his Projectile skill. Using his one last Double Jump to renew his momentum and redirect himself to the weakest one he could find to punch it.

  He failed to land the punch but hearing the sound of the wolf's skull being annihilated behind him made him think he might have overdone it. Looking over, he was slightly shocked at the sight of a headless wolf corpse with a mini crater beneath it. He was immediately pulled out of his reverie when the wolf tried to bite him.

  'Idiot!' He chided himself mentally. 'During a fight, you pay 110% attention and never less'

  Hearing gunfire from behind, he knew his friends were doing their part of the plan. The plan was pretty simple actually. He would sneak into the middle and kill the leader while serving as a distraction. Then his friends would start attacking the rest of the wolves and that was it. It was their first time fighting so that was about the best they could think up. Nevertheless, it worked out.

  Back to his fight, the wolf was dodging all of his attacks but it also couldn't harm him thanks to the bone armor. Getting an idea of how to end the stalemate, he punched forward as he'd done multiple times before and the wolf dodged once more except this time a bone spike popped out of the side of his arm piercing it in the neck.

  It didn't die immediately as you would expect instead it lived for a few moments and it decided to use them to kill. It put all of its mana into a single wind blade and surprisingly didn't aim it at Joey, he was confused until he realized who it was aiming it at, Mark. It knew it couldn't get through his armor so it aimed at someone else. He wanted to stop it, but it was too late he couldn't reach it in time so he threw everything he could at the wind blade to stop it from being formed. The only thing that slightly worked was telekinesis but it wasn't meant to control energy. So, he used his Concentration skill to the max and did two things.

  First, he used Enlightened Writing to form words in front of Mark warning him. Even if he didn't think Mark would react on time. Secondly, he used his Telekinesis and focused on the wind blade and did his best to latch onto the mana and disrupt it….and that was when he realized he was an idiot. He used his Disrupt skill and dispelled the wind blade.

  Breathing raggedly, he was angry at himself. This whole ordeal could have been avoided. If he had used roar at the very beginning, he could've stunned the wolves and gotten a better opening. He also could've used his Locking and Unlocking skill to lock all their mouths shut before he even launched the first attack. Even now, every second he was thinking about it he could think of better ways they could've handled the whole thing. Sadly, these things only came from experience and that was why they came here in the first place. At least he got a couple of decent skills from the ordeal.

  Skills: