Chapter 486: Cryomancer Skills [2]
A deep, hearty laugh filled the empty office. He clapped his hands together once, then again, then leaned back in his chair shaking his head in delight.
"Well done, Moon Outlaw. Well done!"
He pointed at the screen as if speaking directly to the young man on it.
"You did not disappoint me! Not even a little. I knew it. I knew the moment I saw you that you were the investment of the century."
He shook his head, still chuckling.
"Purple lightning. Purple. The boy evolves his element on top of everything else and casually drops it on national broadcast like it’s nothing." Tom wiped a tear of laughter from the corner of his eye. "Tom, you old fox, you’ve still got it."
He let the clip replay. He watched it a second time. Then a third.
The grin never left his face.
♢♢♢♢
Inside the cave, Moon sat down heavily, his back against the cold stone wall. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his chest rising and falling in deep, measured breaths.
He had pushed too hard during the last stretch, burning through his mana reserves faster than his body could replenish them, willing the comprehension to come through sheer effort. It had worked, but not without some cost.
Mastering Cryomancy had been harder than he anticipated.
Four hours had passed since he comprehended Frost Pillar.
Four hours of relentless casting, observing, and adjusting, and the parent skill had only just clicked into place. The gap between secondary skill mastery and primary skill mastery was wider than Moon expected.
The difference came down to how he had acquired his other elemental masteries.
Lightning had been handed to him through evolution. When his Four Element Affinity upgraded to Five Element Affinity, he had gained comprehension over the element of lightning.
The system had done the work for him, deepening his connection to each one as a byproduct of the evolution itself. He hadn’t needed to comprehend lightning at a fundamental level. The skill had simply unlocked that for him.
Cryomancy didn’t work that way. It hadn’t come from evolution. It had come from copying another class. And to truly master it, Moon had to do it himself. He had to understand ice on a fundamental level.
Not just the spell shapes. Not just how to channel mana through frost, but the element itself.
He had spent the first hour trying to force Cryomancy through brute repetition.
Casting it over and over, waiting for the proficiency bar to climb on its own, which it did. But he had hit a plateau not long after. The bar crawled forward in tiny increments, refusing to break past the forty percent mark no matter how many times he used the skill.
Naturally, based on his experience, Moon knew that what he was missing was understanding.
So Moon stopped casting, sat down and began to ponder.
He thought about what ice actually was as phenomenon.
Ice was water that had stopped moving. It was the absence of motion at a molecular level, the moment when energy faded enough that liquid froze into structure.
Cold wasn’t a thing in itself. Cold was simply the lack of heat.
The element of ice was known as the element of stillness.
He thought about its dual nature. Ice was fragile and resilient at the same time. A single sharp impact could shatter a thick sheet, but a steady weight resting on it could be held indefinitely.
It cut like a blade when shaped properly, yet flowed like water when warmed by even the smallest degree. To wield ice was to balance the contradiction.
Force without flexibility shattered. Flexibility without force melted.
He thought about its hunger. Ice wasn’t passive. It crawled outward from any frozen point, leeching warmth from everything it touched, growing larger as it consumed the heat around it.
Hour by hour, Moon built that understanding piece by piece. He cast Frost Pillar and observed how the ice gathered around its base.
He cast Ice Storm and tracked how each icicle formed, condensed, and fell. He created small constructs of ice in his palm, made them flow, made them sharp, made them porous, made them dense.
Each time he understood something new, and the proficiency bar moved.
And finally, on the last push, when he forced himself past his comfortable limits to chase the final percentage, it broke through.
[Cryomancy]
[Order: Second]
[Rank: Epic]
[Level: MAX]
[Details: You have mid affinity with the element of ice. Freezing Cold: Targets struck by your ice attacks suffer a 10% reduction in movement and attack speed for 5 seconds. The effect intensifies with consecutive hits, accumulating frost on the target triggers frostbite. +300% Elemental Control, +300% Elemental Damage.]
Moon stared at the notification, breathing slowly, his mana reserves slowly rising back.
He had earned this one and he was satisfied.
The hidden effect had revealed itself just like he predicted. Freezing Cold. A slow that scaled with consecutive hits. The more he layered ice attacks on a target, the more they slowed down, until a frostbite effect was triggered.
It paired really well with his other skills.
His purple lightning damaged souls and locked muscles with paralysis. His blue fire stripped fire resistance and applied sustained burning. And now his ice slowed enemies while accumulating frost on their bodies. Three elements with three distinct debuff effects.
A target hit by all three would be paralyzed, burning, and frozen at the same time.
As Moon rested, his thoughts drifted to his tenth acupoint.
Cryomancy would be its foundation. Recently, he had been running short on Epic-rank skills suitable for new acupoints, with most of his strongest abilities already locked into existing foundations. Comprehending Cryomancy had solved that problem neatly, at least for the time being. A fresh Epic-rank elemental skill, perfectly suited to anchor another acupoint.
He moved the decision away for later. Cultivating it now, with his mana reserves still recovering, wasn’t smart. He needed his energy for whatever came next in the tournament.
Moon glanced at his watch. The holographic display flickered, showing his current score and ranking.
