A.N - Recommended to read this chap on Royal Road because it looks much better over there.
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Rapid Mana Heart (Passive)
Drastically enhances the user's mana regeneration and capacity, allowing for near-instantaneous replenishment of spent mana. This trait enables seamless, continuous use of mana-based abilities with minimal downtime, making the user far more resilient in prolonged engagements. The rapid circulation of mana through the body also passively fortifies the user's internal energy flow, ensuring a steady and efficient supply at all times.
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Morphing Tissue (Passive/Active)
The user's body gains an advanced regenerative property, not only healing wounds rapidly but also allowing for controlled morphing of flesh and muscle. Injuries mend at an accelerated rate, while the very structure of the body can be subtly reshaped into different tissues to optimize movement, enhance durability, or adapt to external forces. This trait ensures peak combat performance and provides an edge in situations requiring flexibility and resilience.
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Resilient Mana Circuit (Passive)
A highly optimized and fortified network of mana pathways throughout the body, allowing the user to extract and utilize every last drop of mana with maximum efficiency. This trait ensures that no energy goes to waste, enabling powerful abilities even when reserves are critically low. The strengthened circuits also resist damage, making the user's mana flow far less susceptible to disruptions or external interference.
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Adaptive Resistance (Passive)
The user's body instinctively adjusts its resistances based on the types of damage it endures. With each successive hit of a particular nature—be it physical, magical, elemental, or otherwise—the body gradually develops a growing defense against it. This adaptation remains temporarily, providing increasing resilience against repeated threats. The longer the user survives an attack pattern, the harder they become to injure through the same means.
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Constitution-Enhanced Vitality (Passive)
The user's constitution is continuously reinforced by their mana, passively bolstering health, stamina, and natural durability. This trait enhances bodily strength based on the user's physical robustness, making tougher bodies exponentially more resilient. As the user's physical might increases, so too does their ability to endure punishment, recover from injuries, and sustain peak performance even in prolonged encounters.
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Resilient Skeleton (Passive)
The user's skeletal structure is densely reinforced, dramatically increasing durability and resistance to fractures or crushing force. Bones become exceptionally tough while retaining their natural flexibility, making them capable of withstanding immense strain without breaking. This trait ensures superior structural integrity in combat, allowing the user to endure impacts that would shatter lesser bodies.
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Kinetic Diffusion (Passive)
The user's body instinctively scatters and absorbs the force of incoming physical attacks, reducing their impact and mitigating damage. Whether from blunt strikes, slashes, or concussive blows, this trait diffuses kinetic energy across a broader area, diminishing the effectiveness of direct hits. While not outright nullifying attacks, it significantly lowers their lethality, making the user incredibly difficult to incapacitate through brute force alone.
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Regenerative Musculature (Passive)
The user's muscles are both reinforced and regenerative, continuously adapting to stress and damage. This trait not only grants increased physical strength but ensures that strained or torn muscle fibers heal and fortify themselves in real-time, reducing fatigue and enhancing long-term endurance. The stronger and more resilient the user's constitution, the more profound this effect becomes, allowing for sustained peak performance even under extreme duress.
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Eyes of Soul Perception (Active)
The user gains the ability to perceive the intricate fluctuations of soul energy, allowing them to see the essence that lingers within all living things. This vision extends beyond mere physical sight, revealing the subtle currents of emotion, intent, and vitality that make up a being's true presence.
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I skim through the choices once. Twice. A dozen times.
I read each description again and again, eyes flicking over the glowing text with the intensity of a dying man scouring a medical chart for a cure. My fingers idly press against my temple, bone shifting beneath my touch as I condense my helmet into place. A habit. A distraction. Anything to keep my hands busy while my mind races.
I wonder—should I have tried to pull off more insane feats before hitting Level 10? Maybe something ridiculous enough to trigger one of those legendary traits you see in returnee stories or golden finger cheats. You know the type. The ones where some bastard reincarnates and gets a skill like Heaven Defying Omni-Absorption or Limitless Growth just for breathing aggressively near a dragon's corpse.
Would it have made a difference? Probably not. If one of those freaks is out there, I'm fucked anyway. No use crying about it.
Still.
The trait options laid out before me look good, I suppose. Some of them, anyway. Others are unquestionably trash.
Take Rapid Mana Heart, for example. What kind of loser wants an easier time generating mana? My mana pool is already at ten, and that's because I've been squeezing every last drop out of myself like a psychopath. Every time I run dry, my heart keeps pumping, keeps burning, pushing through that empty void until I force the mana back in.
Why the hell would I want to make that easier? To lower my gains? Miss me with that shit.
Same goes for Resilient Mana Circuit. "Oh, you get better results when resources are low!"
No thanks. Real men don't optimize mana efficiency—they ride the edge of collapse, force their blood to circulate manually, and hope they don't stroke out mid-cast.
I'll admit, though—this is all because I can heal through Fleshcrafting. If I didn't have that, I'd probably be a pile of convulsing meat by now. But technically useful in a parallel universe doesn't cut it for me.
Now, Constitution-Enhanced Vitality, Resilient Skeleton, and Regenerative Musculature all sound great. More durability, more toughness, more staying power. Good, right? But then—
Hey, I can do whatever these guys can do!
Fleshcrafting pops out of the shadows, smug as hell, and I can't even argue. It's true. Why would I lock myself into a single path when I can sculpt my body however I want? It's not that those traits are bad—it's that they pale in comparison to freedom.
I cut them from the list.
Next up—Kinetic Diffusion. Now this is interesting.
Pure magic mumbo jumbo shit. No physical equivalent. I can't brute-force my way into replicating it like I can with the others. It's an ability, a defensive mechanism, something I can't mimic by myself. That's… tempting.
But then I read Adaptive Resistance again.
The only thing that stopped me from picking it immediately is that ugly little word—"temporary."
But this is a magic world, no?
How hard could it really be to take temporary and make it permanent? To turn "adaptation" into "evolution"? To inch one step closer to being an unstoppable, ever-changing force of nature?
I drum my fingers against my thigh, my grin stretching wider. Doomsday who?
But then there's Morphing Tissue.
And that's where I get stuck.
Because fuck, I want it. Fleshcrafting is already ridiculous, but this? This could take it to a whole other level.
The problem?
I don't know if I can already do what it promises.
If I can, then it's just another redundancy—like the others that sound good until you realize I can make them obsolete with enough time and effort.
But if I can't?
If Morphing Tissue is something beyond what I'm capable of? If it gives me new possibilities rather than just reinforcing old ones? Then skipping it would be the biggest mistake I could make.
And I don't know.
I don't fucking know enough.
Because I've only had this system for—what? Four days? I haven't even scratched the surface of what I can do. What if I take the wrong thing? What if I lock myself out of something better? What if I—
The voices in my head argue, each side throwing out points and counterpoints, logic and instinct warring for control.
But my grin just gets wider.
So wide I feel the muscles in my cheeks strain, pull, tear, little micro-rips that don't even register before they stitch themselves back together.
Because I've already decided.
I don't care.
Not in the slightest.
A breath. A chuckle.
And then—
"I choose… nothing."
For a moment, the air holds still.
The notification flickers as if uncertain, and then—
—it disappears.
And I laugh.