"You have cleared floor 1"
"Experience Earned"
"Your Magic level has increased from 10 to 11"
"Stat points available"
"You can go on to the next floors safe room, or go back to this floors safe room and try again"
Eli put the point for intellect or wisdom into intellect for some balance and he got 1 free point which he put into reaction making his stats look like this.
"Stats: Strength 6, Reaction 7, Vitality 7, Intellect 5, Wisdom 6, Resistance 7, Will 34"
His Will stat had gone up since the last time he checked and he still didn't quite know what that meant and he brought his thoughts back to his next choice. He had time and he really thought he wasn't supposed to be able to beat that boss at his level. His Epic skill was the only reason it was possible and he still had almost no idea how it worked, so the best option is that he go back and reset this level. Maybe spend a day or two trying to understand and practice with the skill and maybe spend a day on a node. He really wanted to know what was next since he was starting to really enjoy himself, but while the system seemed to want him strong, it certainly wouldn't spare his death. If he failed a trial then he wasn't ever going to be strong enough for what the system wanted anyways so it would surely let him die without hesitation.
He walked back to the beginning safe room and the barrier came up with the timer again, he felt fine but he wanted to take a minute to center himself and check on his nodes and internal magic. Eli sat down near the wall farthest from the tunnel entrance and focused inward on his internal magic, and he was a little surprised. It would seem that intellect increased the density of his internal magic a small amount, it was barely noticeable. However the chaotic movements where the denser portions were crashing into each other causing little compressed pinpoints of magic was noticeably stronger than before. He took a second releasing his will on the magic to keep it somewhat calm and it started to collide in an almost painful way and quickly clamped down on it again. However, in the moment it ran free he could feel a hint of the chaos magic from his skill, this must be why if its used too often it becomes unreliable. Adding more chaos to this would require tremendous will and focus to keep him from losing control of it at his current level of power.
If Eli couldn't practice the skill he could try to take that chaos magic and push it into his chaos node at the base of his neck. The flavor of the chaos in his internal magic did not match the flavor he got from his dormant node, so he started slow and tried to get just a little in. focusing his will on his internal magic he grabbed a bit of the chaos magic and pressed it up against his node. The node seemed to take in the smallest amount, and it started to react violently pushing it out with a small burst of his magic. It sent a ripple through his body and the order node in his head near the forehead spiked with pain as the ripple went through it. His head spun for a second but recovered quickly as he tried to focus on the ripple going through his body.
Eli wasn't getting enough details to figure out what was happening with his magic, even if he could get details, he didn't have context for the feelings so it wouldn't help. Instead he just rode it out, allowing the feeling to pass through his body and committing it to memory in case he got more information later. After it passed he felt a lot of the chaos magic had been broken down in his body and it felt closer to its normal state in his body. Time to practice his blink skill and figure out just what he could do with it.
He blinked about 20 feet in front of where he stood and was facing the opposite direction, exactly how he pictured his position before he closed his eyes. He noticed that he had to have an image in mind that was in third person, like looking down on himself or from the outside. Any attempt to use the skill imagining the view from the new position didn't trigger the skill. He tried to go again right away and used the skill to go 10 feet in front of himself and face directly left but since it was quickly after the last one he ended up going about 13 feet and still facing forward from where he was last. This must be what it means by unreliable, and it would only get more unreliable the more times he used it.
Trying a third time might land him in a wall or he might just explode, he sat and focused and he pressed with his will to keep his magic in check, he doubted he would even be able to use smash with his magic going so crazy. He waited for 10 minutes monitoring how long it took for the chaos magic to break down into regular magic, it was not a quick process. After 30 minutes of waiting it was probably 5 or 10 percent done and he didn't want to wait that long so he tried the trick from before and got the ripple going through his body. This time, with more chaos magic in his body, it was far more painful and he could see what it was doing a bit clearer when not wincing from the pain.
His node, though dormant, recognized the weak and impure chaos magic that his body used for the skill and was sending a counter to it through his body destroying it. This meant that the magic was being destroyed and not broken down into magic he could use. The amount of focus it took to do and the amount of internal magic he was losing made this an impossibility to use in combat. He was going to have to get really good with it so its one use could be used to perfection. It was time to practice Blink until he could confidently use it as a finishing move in fights.
The next 3 days were nothing but Blink practice, and meditating to get the chaos magic clear from his body. He learned a lot in that time about the skill and about his internal magic growing his understanding by leaps and bounds. First he learned that the skill could enhance momentum but not create it, so it could make him move faster but not make him appear in motion when he wasn't before the blink. Second, the skill's line of sight drained magic at an exponential rate based on distance, while five feet was almost no magic, ten feet was a little over five percent of his total. He assumed it would get to the point where even if he could see very far, his current magic couldn't get him more than 50 feet or so.
While focusing on the ripples he created in his body he learned a couple things that told him more about his strengths and where he should focus his growth. The flavor of his internal magic was actually caused by each one of his 10 nodes mixed together based on how strong each of his nodes was and the flavor of his nodes. Essentially his internal magic was the flavor of his magical makeup, most likely making it unique, so if he couldn't hide it he would be easy to pick out of a group or crowd and maybe even track him. Something to work on for later, he thought to himself. The last thing he learned was that his magic regeneration was far more complicated than he thought. It brought it flavored magic from outside his body, from the air or ground, and broke it down to plain completely unflavored magic, then it had to use a bit of his magic to give it his flavor.
This explained why magic regeneration was slower in combat, his body didn't want to have magic in his body that wasn't his when tensed for a fight, part of his max magic pool would have foreign magic and unflavored magic that was unusable in it. His best guess was that it was a subconscious response to danger to make his own magic more his flavor so its use could be used to better effect. Now that he had a better feeling on how to use the skill he wanted to attempt to open another node.
The obvious choice would be his chaos node making the blink skill far more effective, but after all that practice and meditation, he knew that the chaos and order nodes were meant to be for later levels, probably the life and death nodes too but he couldn't be sure. So air seemed to be the next best choice and he spent another day on this using the same method as before but with no success. He pushed the most dense parts of his internal magic into the node but it just didn't want to hold it, it felt too thin, like his magic just needed to be more dense for it to stay in. Maybe he needs more intellect, when he increased it, he felt a slight difference in its density, or more focus, maybe more time. He wasn't sure and he wanted to get back to clearing this floor over and over to get some levels before he pushed to the next level.
Eli walked back out of the safe room and repeated his strategy from last time, knowing what to expect, he was successful, but this time he took a couple more hits from the big guy. He was trying to get a better handle on his reaction and timing to increase his fighting skill and made a couple slip ups. He did, however, make an important discovery, his focus determined how much of his stat he could lean on. If he focused on his power and damage he could leverage the stat more than if he focused on speed, reaction, perception, etc. So, if he focuses on his reaction stat while trying to teach himself to fight he is able to move faster and read the big rats' movements better. Again he could only guess but this had to be his 'Will' stat at work and he needed much more practice with it so he could change his focus faster during a fight.
After this second run he gained another level, putting the stats in intellect and reaction as he figured they would be more useful. The 1.5 for the free stats made more sense as he got 2 free stats this time, it must alternate with one stat on odd levels and 2 on even levels. As he got his mace wielding and blinking fighting style down into muscle memory. Or at least he tried to get it to work, but even after 12 more clears over the next two days and the addition of 4 more levels, he just wasn't feeling it there. The change of focus from reaction to strength took about a half second and that slip on focus caused him to get hit a lot more than he should. Despite his best efforts he was not able to lower the time that switch in focus took to accomplish, the worst part was when he tried to switch to magic focus to make it stronger or cast faster for smash or blink it took over a second. It was like his internal magic became fuzzier when and not as clear when focusing on his reaction or strength.
It was becoming clear to him that without a tremendous will, it was difficult to focus on more than one aspect of his power during a difficult fight. The other parts were still there and they were potent but he couldn't squeeze all of the power out of them that he was capable of. He could try to pick one and focus on it, investing points and making it his focus, or he could try and force his will to focus faster between his stats. Having done most things the hard way since his foster home days, he was going to do it the hard way, he took a look at his stats before moving on to the next floor.
"Magic level 16"
"Stats: Strength 8, Reaction 9, Vitality 9, Intellect 9, Wisdom 8, Resistance 8, Will 47"
He was pretty happy with his stats even spread, the last 2 clears of this level were pretty simple. While he was still in the single digits, he felt like he was getting stronger, but he would have to wait until this dungeon was over and he was back outside before he could really get a test to compare things to how they used to be before he came in. Now, though, it was time to push on to level 2 and hope his recent gains would be enough to carry him through it. He touched the carved stone at the end of the tunnel, it was similar to the entrance stone that got him in the dungeon. The same prompts came up and he selected yes.