Descend- Seeing Stars by Sean Oswald (the ebook reader .TXT) 📕

inside of him. He combined his PSI sight, Hyper Accuracy, and Evolved Assessment into one attempt to gain a deeper understanding. Rather than being content with pushing each of the skills to the fifth boost he also tried to weave them together.

      Jay focused his will on making them work in complete unity. As he struggled to sync them up completely, he actually stopped looking at his core and started to focus more effort to controlling his skills more fully. That prompted him to activate the skill he had assimilated from Mia. Her Expanded Mind was at a skill level of 493. Other than PSI Crystals it was far and away her most developed skill.

      He assumed that she used it repeatedly or more likely on a constant basis. Jay knew both from the fusion and from his discussions with her that it allowed her to open her mind up to knowledge that she didn’t possess. The knowledge had to exist, but she had gained a staggering number of things through this. Her insights had helped Ava, Huong, and the others despite the fact that she wasn’t much of a scientist herself.

      That was one of the limitations of the skill. She had a great deal of difficulty passing on alien scientific knowledge even if her head was crammed full of it. Jay made a mental note to make sure that all the fuses working in the science lab considered Assimilating this skill from Mia. If Ava or someone had direct access to A’snkarnt knowledge in her head, she might be able to adapt the systems far more easily and quickly.

      For now though, he was focused on trying to learn how to sync up skills. The knowledge that he got was far more touchy feely than he had expected. It was as though there was no actual established knowledge about the process anywhere in the universe. It did however give him a general feel for how to make the skills work together. He was filled with images and impressions of all the evolved humans who had managed to combo any skills together, much of which was ironically his own knowledge already.

      Jay tried to apply it though. He sought that perfect frame of mind where they should sync to work in tandem. But then something odd happened.  All of the resistance disappeared in an instant and a flashing notification appeared.

Three skills have evolved to form a new skill. Given that one of the skills was already an evolved skill this is now a Master Skill.

Evolved Assessment, PSI Sight, and Hyper Accuracy have evolved into Sensory Precision Mastery. The new skill will have a combined skill level of 75% of each of the skills added up. 

That set the skill level to the new skill at 2646 which made it his third-highest skill. Instead of immediately trying it out though, Jay focused on his Expanded Mind skill which he had assimilated from Mia. He now had more knowledge about how to make skills work together but as he focused the skill on the question of how to evolve skills together, he started to piece together what needed to be done.

      From there he looked at his skill list to see how he might improve them. The jump in skill level for that ability was crazy and if he could improve some of his other abilities that way it would be well worth this effort. The next ones that hit him were Evolved Telepathy and Evolved Projected Bond.

The telepathy had evolved on its own when he began to be able to read minds. It was a skill that he rarely used because it made him feel dirty in a “you can’t wash your hands often enough” sort of way. It was so invasive. Maybe he was being naive, but he couldn’t help how he felt about it.

      The Evolved Projected Bond was a combination of his Sensual Projection and an ability that he had gotten from Mia, that of forming bonds. The interesting thing as he thought about it was that those were all forms of communications. Emotional or with word, temporary or permanent, it was all communication.

      So, Jay focused his mind on trying to combine those abilities. It came together easier this time. Maybe because he was doing it for the second time or maybe because the skills had such a common thread. Either way he got the notification telling him that they had been combined into a master skill and that because they were both evolved skills, he gained 100% of the levels in both skills. The new skill was called Telepathic Bonding Mastery and had a level of six hundred twenty-six.

      Again it was another leap forward for skills that he had difficult leveling up. Not as impressive as the first combination but still good. It prompted him to look at his other skills and try to envision ways in which they might be merged. At first, he was just coming up blank. Then he saw Evolved Adaptive Speed and Primal Power.

Primal Power was a skill he got from Jessie and allowed him to adapt animal powers to himself although not as much as a physical adaptation as more of an instinctual one. Evolved Adaptive Speed was the most bizarre adaptation he had as it was a combination of his physical speed and an ability that he got from Ava which allowed him to adapt to changes more quickly.

      The more he thought about them the more he realized that they were both adaptive abilities. So, what the heck. He tried to push them together using the knowledge he had already gained. This time there was a bit more resistance. Maybe that was because the skills didn’t match as well. Or maybe not.

      He calmed himself and realized that intent mattered. That meant that what he believed about something mattered.