The day after the party, Derek was back in the summoning chamber, going for an entirely new kind of Aspect. That of the Caladrius.

  Mythologically speaking, it was a white bird that absorbed diseases and flew into the sun to burn up alongside them, often described as holy, occasionally compared to Jesus, or treated as an extension of him.

  In reality, it was a monster that provided healing powers and was apparently a titanic pain in the ass to kill. But since it was meant to fly into the sun in the myths, a second part of its kit was the ability to operate up there.

  Now, most people picked undead Aspects, which granted resistance to poison and disease, as well as removing the need to breathe, but he felt like the ability to heal others had the potential to be extremely useful. Not to mention that needing that capability and lacking it would doubtlessly be painful.

  Also, fighting airborne monsters was a skill he needed to acquire.

  So he’d start with the Lesser Caladrius, Tier 3, kill at least a hundred of those to max out his XP, more if they were being stingy with the Aspects, then switch to the Tier 5 version, which had dropped the “lesser” label, murder his way through those until he had that Aspect too, then round out the week with the rest of the monsters on the avian summoning tabel.

  Feather, chip of sunstone, skull of a tit, which was apparently a rather unfortunately named bird, take it all, chuck it in the circle, add mana, and run like hell … or simply walk away at a reasonable pace while exercising restraint when it came to triggering the circle.

  For obvious reasons, Derek picked option two, summoning two [Magic Missiles] before finally unleashing the beast, then shooting it down the moment it appeared.

  The Lesser Caladrius’ corpse dropped, the Aspect … did not.

  Huh, that was a little too easy. Or maybe just easy, on second thought.

  After all, it was “only” a Tier 3. Plenty capable of killing a normal person, with enough supernatural oomph to make a real nuisance of itself, but that same description applied to him as well. Hell, going by difficulty, he should be fighting Tier 4s by now, and once he had enough Aspects under his belt, a Tier 5 might even be in reach, as long as he was careful with the matchup.

  What he couldn’t do, however, was go after Tier 6 opponents; that was decidedly the end of the line for him, as that was when monsters got [Aura] and that was soemthing he either needed an [Aura] of his own to counter, which would require him to reach the second Evolution, or have the raw stats to bull his way through it, which he wouldn’t get without a Levels he wouldn’t be grabbing until he reached [Chimera], or buying Aspects, the process of which would interfere with his efforts to get his desired next [Class].

  In summation … stay the course.

  Summon, walk away, kill.

  Summon, realize that walking away is kinda pointless at this point, kill.

  Summon, find out that blood splatters quite aways, curse, learn a cleaning spell in between summonings.

  And so on, and so forth.

  Derek found himself getting very much into a routine, working his way through not only Household Magic for Dummies but also Basics of Combat Magic and Primer to Elemental Conversion.

  All books he’d read at the academies, but not been able to actually get direct use out of, due to lacking a [Class] that would allow him to learn spells.

  Now, though? Now he could tear them from the pages to his hearts content, having already obtained the most basic forms of [Mana Shield], [Mana Blade], and [Mana Burst], the last one creating a cone of force to buy himself some breathing room and keep enemies at bay, except it also had a lot of space for “creative applications.”

  Namely, using the single most unused, underutilized portion of his bloodline, the Poltergeist’s ability to nullify gravity’s hold, to let him float, and then push himself around with [Mana Burst], because the spell let him select whether or not there was recoil.

  So focused was he on the process that he almost missed the Aspect when it dropped. But there it was.

  … And he couldn’t slot it yet. Because Aspect slots were fucking expensive.

  Next up: regular Caladrius!

  Derek prepped the circle, activated it and a mere split-second later, he was on his ass, five meters away, chest feeling he’d bellyflopped into the pool from the ten meters board, wincing, staring at the shining white peacock, the size of a black bear, glaring at him from within the circle, folding the wing that had hit him back against its body with deliberate slowness.

  Shit.

  Derek’s hands flashed forward, hurling the [Magic Missiles] while he kicked off the ground to open up the distance further, mentally guiding the glowing bars of mana to slam into the monster’s wing joints …

  The Caladrius launched itself skyward with a single beat of its wings, then rolled to the side to make his attacks go wide.

  His attacks followed, of course, continuing to track for a few seconds longer before fizzling out.

  Derek raised both hands, both triggering [Lesser Warp Space] and unleashing a burst of hellfire, the distance between him and the creature shortening, a ranged attack that wouldn’t even have covered half the needed distance instead being performed at functionally point-blank range as the space between them was compressed down into almost nothing … and then the bloody bird did a goddamn barrel roll.

  Shit.

  Derek threw himself through the sphere of warped space, appearing almost directly underneath the damn thing, hurling another pair of [Magic Missiles] only for them to be smashed out of the air by a wave of light, an attack was followed directly by the bird, which had chosen to use the sheet of white energy as cover and was now raking its claws through the air, at his face, only to skitter off a hastily manifested [Mana Shield] and instantly take off, fleeing for the proverbial hills.

  Or, you know, the far side of the room.

  He hurled a [Mana Burst] after it, but it simply folded its wings and let itself get hurled forward, then finally landed lightly on the ground.

  The Caladrius turned to face him, meeting his eyes for a brief moment before rather pointedly turning away and pecking at the ground.

  What the … that was solid concrete. There was nothing there to peck, much less anything edible! That … that fucking bird was taunting him.

  Oh, now it made much more sense that this monster was widely considered to be rather “tilting.”

  Derek mentally reached out to a massive area of space, a sphere that covered almost the entirety of what separated him and the Caladrius, reading himself to compress it down to the size of a broom closet, then flood it with hellfire … and then a blinding headache tore his concentration to shreds.

  Ow.

  One hand still held out, prepared to unleash hellfire to fend off further attack, he used the other to massage his temples.

  That had been too much for the [Skill], clearly.

  But what if he created a “sheet” of compressed space to split off the room? That would still create a smaller section of room but require him to influence a far smaller area, and then the “flood of hellfire until I run out of mana” plan should still work …

  No, you know what? He would kill this damn thing “legit,” with his current abilities, without resorting to wasteful “I win” buttons, then study the shit out of his books until he could utterly murder these fucking birds as easily as he had their lesser cousins.

  But that was easier said than done, even with his stubbornness having well and truly kicked in.

  Derek drew his rapier for the first time in this fight, a slightly upgraded variant that he could channel magic off with at least decent efficiency, and unleashed a [Far Strike], trying to slash the bird from the air, a line of light erupting from the tip to bisect the beast … and missed.

  Had it predicted the attack by watching his weapon? The [Skill] did require significant movement, visible enough to draw conclusions from, but for a bird to do so?

  Shit.

  Derek decided to try a different approach, namely, the alternate use of [Mana Burst]. Crouch, free himself from gravity’s grasp with his bloodline’s power, then jump, straight at the monster, whose expression of shock was surprisingly understandable on a bird’s face.

  Of course, the Caladrius immediately took to the air, trying to move above him, and succeeding easily, more than moving out of range of any kind of attack he could reasonably use.

  And it was right in that estimation … but only as it stood right now.

  A [Mana Burst] hit the ground and launched him skyward, while a swiftly manifested [Mana Shield] led the way, crushing a lance of light the bird had sent his way, he hadn’t seen but anticipated, and even though the bird dodged, it no longer had the time to dodge enough.

  Hellfire rolled off him in waves, the air around him all but replaced with flame … hopefully, it had been enough.

  Derek cancelled the [Skill] keeping him airborne before he hit the ceiling, dropping back down to the ground and landing lightly, craning his head back to search for the monster.

  It was still alive, still capable of fighting, and very much on fire, careening through the room.

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  He watched it do that for a few seconds, realized that it would eventually be forced to land, and decided to wait, a choice that was proven correct a minute later.

  A lance of light was deflected by his rapier; he sidestepped a second, and then skewered the bird with his rapier.

  Yeah … he wasn’t trying that again unless he didn’t have another choice.

  ***

  Three days later, he’d finished carving his way through all weaker bird variants, earned a ton of XP, and learned some better anti-air spells, starting with [Lesser Gravity Field], which did exactly what it said on the tin. It had limited power, so it wouldn’t help with everything, but he’d checked, and yes, it would let him ground a Tier 5 Caladrius.

  And it did. Even starting with a hundred mana less due to needing to cast his spell, the fight was relatively easy, in the grand scheme of things, and considering the fact that it was quite a few levels above him meant that getting the Aspect was relatively fast and easy, but not entirely painless, even if the claw wounds did heal quite quickly.

  Yep … still needed to find the XP to slot it, though.

  ***

  Now, onto the second Aspect, though he wouldn’t be able to slot that one either.

  Also, the second one after the Space Elemental that would allow him to gain [Alcubierre Bubble], which would, in turn, let him take the Dragonfly into FTL … although technically not, as far as physics were considered. Instead, the [Skill] “only” warped space around the ship so that it seemed like they were moving at faster-than-light speeds, but that was weird considering that someone using it could, you know, race light and trivially win.

  Calling it “FTL” was the same way as describing the Assai as “terminally jumpy on a genetic level,” a perfectly adequate and highly descriptive term in normal-people situations that also doubled as a handy way to induce homicidal rage in scientists of the relevant field.

  Though the Assai, as a species, were quite prone to picking a reaction before they could determine if it was a good one.

  … Which was why it had been such a massive issue when one of their fleets had wound up in the Serendipity star system at the same time. The Assai had evolved in extensive cave systems in their home world, where anything that was close enough for you to see was typically also close enough to tear your face off.

  Therefore, “can be seen” plus “isn’t explicitly friendly” equalled “must fight.”

  Humans suffered from a similar issue, where they had a hard time wrapping their mind around the fact that something they could see oh so clearly with their ship’s sensors was actually halfway across the solar system, and wouldn’t even be in range if someone on there had the best ship teleportation [Skills] known to man … but that was obviously a far lesser version of the same problem.

  In person, things were quite a bit less disastrous, but still plenty bad, especially when taking into account that the Assai looked rather buglike, with four eyes, two at the “front” and two at the “back” of their skull, with exoskeletal growths on their arms and legs, complete with joints that were borderline liquid, all of which combined to form an impression that was even more alien than, well, “normal” aliens, insofar as that term could apply in the first place.

  As such, in the grand scheme of things, “terminally jumpy on a genetic level” summed things up quite nicely, a succinct warning that could be understood without several dissertations’ worth of clarifications, much like a whole host of similarly accurate but incorrect statements, which he’d continue to use regardless.

  Which nicely brought him back around to his current “target.”

  You could always slot any Aspect, of course, but compatible Aspects could be stacked, leaving you with the Stat points the earlier ones gave while overwriting the earlier [Skills] with better variants, so he’d grab the “basic” ones now.

  Up to four in total could be put in a single slot, one from a monster from the first three Tiers, a second from Tiers four to six, a third from seven to nine, and the last one had to come from Tier ten, though Derek wouldn’t be able to face anything above Tier five in his current state.

  Now, it was time to stuff his slots with something “compatible,” which in this case was a giant prehistoric fish called a Dunkleosteus that he could eventually build into a Cosmic Leviathan, which also supplied the incredibly valuable [Cosmic Gaze] [Skill] that gave its wielder a bubble of space around them in which they were able to observe things in real time, ignoring the normal delay the speed of light ordinarily imposed.

  If something was a light-second away, without this [Skill], you’d only see it as it had been a single second ago, normally. Which wasn’t that big of an issue under most circumstances, unless you were trying to target something, but it was still an incredibly useful ability to have, at least until he got something better from a [Class].

  But Derek really didn’t want to fight a water monster. He could swim, of course, but still … fighting underwater was a highly specialized skill he wasn’t exactly good at, and hadn’t had the time to make a [Skill] for.

  But he was in the university pool, the one for aquatic monster murder, not swimming, to be clear, and had thrown out a pool noodle summoning circle to float out across the water with summoning materials piled atop it, already glowing with mana, ready to be triggered.

  With one last sigh, he did so and heaved himself into the water after it.

  … Only to haul himself back out two minutes later, cursing internally and holding his side, hoping he had enough mana to regrow all the skin on his torso.

  The fight had started out well enough, with him diving in and swimming up to the monster before it had even gotten its bearings.

  And then things had gone to hell in a handbasket.

  Issue one: he was fighting underwater, and while he had trained for this, it was still a pain in the ass. The water took a lot of force out of your blows, moving was hard, you kept having to surface to breathe, any opponent that required you to go in the water was almost certainly adapted to it … yeah, pain in the ass.

  Issue two: a Dunkleosteus was fucking huge. Half again as long as a fully-grown great white, with a bulbous head covered in armored plates and in place of teeth, the damn thing’s jawbones protruded out instead, both sharpened to the point of absurdity and easily capable of biting through chainmail, having been evolved to ignore the armor sported by seemingly all its contemporaries, all of which combined to create a very tough creature that was almost impossible to grab onto and that would tear off his skin anytime it thrashed to throw him off/bit him.

  And issue three: Derek was entirely lacking in tools good for underwater combat.

  You know what?

  Fuck. This.

  Fuck the fish, fuck the water, fuck trying to “fight it like a man.”

  Hellfire burst from Derek’s outstretched hands, almost instantly extinguished by the water but surviving long enough to begin the process of bringing the pool to a boil, though he wound up burning through most of his mana before the fish finally went belly-up. Not really, a Dunkleosteus was too ancient to have a swim bladder and therefore wasn’t flipped by it, but it still died.

  From now on, he’d switch to summoning some more critters, max out the XP-limits for some various golems, study magic in between, and keep that up until he had every spell at his fingertips needed to murder those fishes without resorting to boiling the goddamn pool.

  He quickly used [Phantom Armor] to switch to a university-appropriate outfit, swung by the library, grabbed some more spellbooks, then finally headed back over to a standard, dry, summoning room to murder some other kinds of monsters, starting with golems.

  ***

  The first new spell he’d grabbed was called [Hydronet]. It effectively tied together long chains of water molecules, forcing anyone who moved one to move them all, creating a massive amount of extra drag for anyone and anything that wound up entangled. But because the “chaining” effect was entirely magical and largely ethereal, it was functionally invisible and undetectable until struck.

  A lot of people would probably consider him “powering through” issues by learning new spells and generating new [Skills] anytime he was stuck cheating.

  A lot of people, those same people, to be precise, could kiss his ass. Learning and growing was the entire point of his starter [Class], and if he had the time to do so, it was something he’d do.

  The second was the rather flippantly named [Mana Torpedo], a spell that had been directly created by human hands, rather than bought from the [System] and transcribed, which was probably why the name was so weird.

  In essence, it was a spell designed to cut the resistance of whatever (non-solid) medium it was travelling through to a bare minimum, perfect for use in dense atmospheres or underwater, though the latter had likely been the purpose the creator had had in mind.

  It certainly wasn’t something he’d have spent [Skill] point on, not that that would have even been a possibility, but seeing as learning spells only cost time, and not very much of it where this one was concerned …

  Between those two spells, he quickly slaughtered his way through the lot of them until he got his hands on an Aspect, then proceeded onwards to a Mosasaur, a gigantic aquatic lizard the size of a semi-truck. Literally, actually, considering that Mosasaurs were almost entirely lizards from an evolutionary perspective.

  But other than learning the trick of phasing while underwater to “fall” far faster than the monster could swim to dodge, they weren’t that much more trouble than the Dunkleosteus had been, so even after he’d gotten the Aspect, he kept going until he’d hit the XP limit, which finally let him slot the Lesser Caladrius Aspect and choose [Healing Touch] as the [Skill], then slapped the Aspect of the Caladrius on top of that, uprading the existing [Skill] to [Healing Light], and grabbing [Inner Light] as the new one.

  Yep, reducing Aspect [Skill] descriptions had been the correct decision. Also, he could now heal others. Granted, any colony would have more than a few designated healers, and a solid supply of potions, so daydreams of rescuing lost colonies from the depths of disease, becoming a proper savior who erased sickness as the only healer present, were unlikely to come true, but being able to heal would come in handy.

  And as for [Inner Light] … what was there to be said? He was a starship captain, not keeling over dead the moment there was a leak was an essential [Skill] to have.

  Also, after thinking things over, Derek axed the “Aspect of the So-and-So” in his status sheet, simply listing the monsters he was pilfering [Skills] from, for the sake of readability.

  ***

  Then, he had two more Aspects to grab. Firstly, the basis for the Cosmic Leviathan Aspect that Isaac had said he’d get him, and something in the final slot he’d have to buy to get [Chimera], for which Derek had settled on something from the “illusion” summoning list, as that was where both anti-eavesdropping and, well, illusion [Skills] came from.

  With the illusions, especially, getting the Aspect was easy. The monsters of that category were tricky bastards, appearing not in the summoning circle but nearby, and then proceeding to create all sorts of falsehoods in the hopes of the summoner doing something stupid/suicidal.

  And while Derek could take that problem head-on … why bother? Just carpet-bomb the area with hellfire, then wait until his mana came back before summoning the next one.

  As such, getting both a Tier 3 and Tier 5 Aspect wound up taking four days that were mostly spent studying, rather than fighting, followed by him clearing out Tier one, two, and four as well, just so he could check that off as “done,” though to his great shame, he realized there was a more efficient way to do things only by the time he was a quarter of the way through.

  If all he was going to do was summon the creature and sweep the entire area they could have popped up in, why stick to summoning only one at a time?

  Instead, he filled every circle in the ground he could, then dragged in a few of the mobile ones, sizable metal sheets with the required engravings, charged them all, and then triggered them simultaneously, then blew them all to hell with, er, hellfire.

  Hardly elegant, but by God was it efficient.

  And as for the final Aspect he needed, that of something from the Draconic summoning table, he could stick the Void Dragon Aspect on, well …

  … The damn table didn’t have anything in Tier 4 or 5 to summon.

  It’d be the Drake only, until he got [Chimera], and it was up to Derek to pray that not being able to double-stack the slot wouldn’t bite him in the ass. But, at the same time, that meant the only creatures he’d have to fight from this list were a cakewalk, leaving him “free” to murder his way through the other summoning lists.