Assimilate All Talents

When Sol next opened his eyes, he took out a pocket watch and checked the time.

‘It's already morning…’

When he returned from Zaman’s lesson, it was late in the afternoon, and he immediately began practicing [Siphon]. He hadn’t planned how long he would practice, and he ended up training for over 12 hours.

Sol checked for any system messages, but none appeared, which didn’t surprise him.

‘I need to relearn [Siphon] from the ground up.’

Previously, he had used [Siphon] exactly as the system instructed, and it improved with use over time, but he never really understood how it worked. He realized that while he could continue to brute force it and spam the skill, it was better to take a more thoughtful approach, similar to what he did with [Terra Manipulation]. He needed to truly learn how it worked, understand its mechanics, and from there, test ways to improve it.

This meant he had to start from the beginning. Using the fake corpses he recalled in the white room, Sol slowly went step-by-step through the process. It took him a while to understand the fundamentals, but he narrowed the entire process down to four key steps.

‘First, I scan the target’s body and mind. This involves sensing the memories I want and finding every piece of knowledge and muscle memory related to them. The next step is extracting as much information as possible. Then, there's the reformatting; I need to change the information to conform to the way my mind and body process information, which is unique for each person. If I don’t do this step, there would be a lot of dissonance, which could lead to breaking my mind or body. The last step is the actual implementation of the information, which allows me to experience the skill as if I lived through it myself.’

While Sol understood how it fundamentally worked, there were still questions he couldn’t answer.

‘I still don’t know why I can’t [Siphon] bodies that have been dead for long. Theoretically, it should work a month after death, but at level 6, it only works if it's been less than a week, and barely at that. For maximum efficiency, it needs to be under five hours.’

He couldn’t comprehend what factor he was missing; it was something he had to test in the real world to truly find out for sure. After all, the white room only simulates from his memories; if he didn’t know about an unknown component, it wouldn't be created in the fake corpse.

There were other theories he needed to test, like the skills he could extract if he only had certain body parts, the siphoning of living individuals like the mind shaper back in Kerman, and the source of the ability.

‘Somehow, it costs no mana to use [Siphon] and it doesn't feel like magic; it honestly feels more like a psychic ability.’

Sol knew he needed a lot more time to truly understand what [Siphon] was, and for every question he answered, he got a new question in return. He considered how long it would take to fully understand the skill so he could then break through to A-Rank and found it unfeasible.

‘I would need at least two weeks just to work my way back up to level 5 in terms of proficiency, then maybe a month or two to push it to max, and who knows how long it would take to comprehend a law technique from that… That's too long, I can’t spend all my time on this.’

Knowing it would take over two months to even begin the first attempts to break through, he had to consider his original options.

‘[Reinterpret] and [Aggregate] are already EX. I’ll rank up one of those first and work on improving [Siphon].’

He believed it didn’t matter in what order he did it, and at least this way, he could become A-Rank sooner. Of the two talent skills to tackle first, Sol leaned more toward [Aggregate]. Overall, it was a much more mysterious skill than [Reinterpret], and now that he had somewhat of an idea where these colorful strings led, he hoped he could make a lot more progress than before.

With a solid plan in mind, Sol stood up from his bed and made his way to the squad’s communal area to get breakfast.

...

Meanwhile, in the humble town of Jubalin, a modest house was being used as a secret meeting spot for a certain faction of nobles.

A long curved table stretched from one side of the room to the other as over 40 nobles, the heads of their respective families, sat with mostly B-Rank guards and a few A-Rankers standing behind them for their protection. Within the crowd of nobles, Lord Sigurd turned to Victor, who had been silently frowning behind him the entire time.

“Did you remember to bring it?” Sigurd whispered.

Victor nodded and slightly opened his doublet to show a small metallic pin that looked like an owl's head on his shirt collar. It looked like any other decoration, but he wasn’t the only one wearing it. Sigurd also had an owl pin placed on his sleeve. In fact, most of the people, noble and guards alike, had one as well.

At this moment, the Duchess of the South, Gladys, entered the room. The presence of the middle aged noblewoman caused everyone to subconsciously turn their heads to her as she sat at the dead center of the table.

Gladys gave only a glance at the nobles seated and spoke. “It appears everyone is here. Before we begin, does anyone wish to say anything?”

The atmosphere became tense with her question. They had gone to great effort to gather secretly with the help of space magic, but the reason for doing so left many hesitant.

Seeing that nobody was willing to ask the obvious, Sigurd stood from his chair and asked, “Do you really intend to make a deal with those monsters? There is only one thing they want, and that's our blood.”