Blacksmith vs. the System

"Let's start with something simple," I said then closed my eyes, doing nothing. The simplest thing was to test the rawest representation of the Stat. For Strength, it was punching things. For Intelligence, it was calculations.

For Wisdom, it was memory.

I closed my eyes, and focused on the moments from the past.

Ever since I was a child, I have been smart in a conventional sense. A part of it was the ease I had with numbers and complicated concepts, but my memory had played quite a part as well. I just needed to read something a few times to commit to my memory, and the core stuck with me.

But, comparing that with my current experience was impossible. I just needed to close my eyes, and every book I had read, including the adventure novels I had read as a child, popped with perfect recall.

It was a fascinating feeling … but also a disquieting one. Yes, I was familiar with the ways the Stats had transformed me fundamentally, but there was a great difference between the ability to casually carry weights measured in tons and one that fundamentally changed the way I had processed information.

The worst part, I couldn't bring myself to be unhappy about it. Not when it would give me an incredible advantage in everything I was doing. Suddenly having a perfect recall meant that everything I had learned, including the offhand discussions between two unrelated academics could be turned into assets.

More importantly, it was far from the only way it helped. I raised my finger, and a tiny glob of mana appeared on my finger. Before, I could barely manipulate it through my full focus, often using the composite weapons as a guide for more complicated tricks.

Yet, the mana danced over my fingers, transforming between states. Not just between more gaseous, liquid, or denser states, but actually turning into decay and back. A completely new type of understanding, one that ran contrary to everything I had been experimenting with.

Up until now, every single experiment I had conducted had treated mana as a material, one that required external forces to be controlled, be it shapes, pressure, or sheer willpower, all based on Intelligence-based spell casting. But, looking from the perspective of Wisdom, I could feel that it was more.

Far more.

Instinctually, it felt like conceptual manipulation was far superior to the alternative … but it was a baseless thought, built upon a sudden sense of empowerment. That much, I was sure of, especially since my memory allowed me to recall the sheer devastation Maria was able to create.

It was a difficult piece of evidence to clear.

I continued to sit on the metal floor, breathing deeply as I tried to separate the real from the elation from acquiring new sensations. It was difficult, as the influence of Wisdom was pervasive across my thoughts.

I felt like it brought me comprehension, an instinctual understanding of the 'truth' but I was very reluctant to believe that. I had spent my whole career fighting against other people's 'trivial and obvious' conclusions about the concepts that they claimed to understand.

Admittedly, I might be wrong, and the understanding from Wisdom might actually be true, but I doubted it. It almost certainly had some critical weaknesses. Maybe it was weaknesses that could be bypassed easily, similar to the way Maria played chess, her strategic mistakes easily covered by her tactical acuity.

Or, it might carry a much bigger blind spot. One that I was reluctant to truly assess.

I wished someone I could trust was here. Maria would be my first option, her strong magical competencies allowing me to delve deeper into the concept of Wisdom, with Eleanor being a close second. Ironically, I found myself wishing that Rosie was here as well, who seemed to be aware of more things than I had expected —

That train of thought had been interrupted by several memories. Admittedly, being interrupted was a bit of exaggeration, as it wasn't a sudden, intrusive flashback, but a gentle remembrance. Just like how mentioning something is sometimes accompanied by older memories.

In my case, remembering Rosie's name had brought along a deluge of memories, which, admittedly, was the case for Eleanor and Maria as well. The ones about Rosie made me freeze for one simple reason.

They were from before the Cataclysm.

"Well, that's … something," I muttered even as I closed my eyes, focusing on the past, and the memories that came with it. If it wasn't for the flawless recall, which had allowed me to reconstruct the scenes with an accuracy that I could never have imagined to be possible, I was ready to dismiss them as nonsense.

But, it was not. I could remember many times Rosie was in the background as I walked around the campus. I might have been willing to believe that it was a coincidence, that she was a student of another department and nothing else, but two things changed my mind.

First, she only appeared six weeks before the Cataclysm, with no sign of being on campus beforehand. I was sure of it, because Wisdom didn't only give memory, but also a strong recall ability, one that allowed me to search for relevant memories with relative ease.

Then, there was the number of times I could remember her in the background. Treated alone, every single of them could be written as a coincidence, but looked together, the pattern was clear.

Every single one of those memories, she was in the background, alone, busy with a perfectly innocent task, but her gaze was always following me.

"What a mess," I muttered. Admittedly, I didn't know if it was actually true, or even if it was, what it actually meant. I didn't even know if the memories of those scenes were completely accurate.

I didn't expect the memories to be complete illusions, but the way we remembered the past, especially when it came to audiovisual memory, was sketchy at best; that much I knew even if it wasn't my field of expertise.

And, even if it was accurate, just by pointing me to Maria and Eleanor, she deserved an earnest discussion. Even if she had an ulterior motive, she had earned that.

"That doesn't make it any less confusing," I muttered before deciding to ignore it.

Once again, I focused inward, but this time, my focus wasn't on my memories, no matter how fascinating it was to summon every scrap of knowledge I had touched. It was distracting. Maybe I would stop and try to develop that famous mind-palace to keep those intrusive thoughts more organized.

Yet, the moment I thought that, the flow of random memories ceased, showing that it was easier to control than I had expected.

"But then, I shouldn't be surprised. After all, Strength didn't make us break every single wall by accident like a drunk superhero," I said while I turned my attention to the other benefit.

The ability to transform mana. I tried to shuffle its shape rather than nature, trying to create the complicated patterns that I had seen from Maria, but those were outside my reach. Admittedly, I could shape the mana smoother, but it was similar to how Farmers were able to lift more when their Vitality increased, but not to a point that could rival Strength.

Similarly, I could feel that my improved Essence gave me more flexibility, but not in any way that could rival Intelligence, especially not at the level Maria had displayed.

I still experimented with altering its form, shaping it into complex geometries, and weaving it into intricate patterns, but the limits soon became obvious.

Yet, when it came to transforming the nature of the mana directly, it was incredibly effective. I raised my hand, using my Fire Bolt skill, which still took the same amount of time to occur. Its impact was somewhat elevated, but not enough to justify its great impact.

Then, I raised my finger, and focused on replicating the same effect without all those patterns. I just infused the idea of fire to the mana, and it flew forward.

[-100 Mana]

It hit against the metal, only to actually melt the metal I had targeted.

I gulped. "Well, that's more than I had expected," I muttered even as I examined the results. It wasn't made of the fire-resistant material, but that didn't change the fact that it was not only metal, but a supernaturally-enhanced one, and melting such a thing wasn't exactly easy.

Yet, my offhanded experiment was enough to achieve such a result. But then, maybe my shock was misplaced, as a few points of any stats were enough to fundamentally change everything, and the Wisdom I had received was hardly a few points, meaning it was more of a fundamental transformation than just an experimental one.

I needed to be careful testing its limits … later. As much as I wanted to experiment with my latest stat, I was receiving the constant signal of mana deficiency from the dungeon, which was surprisingly similar to thirst.

I rose from my meditation with a renewed sense of purpose. There was much to be done, but with my latest upgrade, which had been far more impressive than I had expected, I felt equipped to actually deal with them.

I opened another gate.

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