Success! I hadn't just gained a skill; I'd acquired a new way of perceiving reality itself. Mana Eyes (F) was, without a doubt, the most valuable thing I'd created. It had three distinct uses, and I could already feel its potential humming behind my eyelids.
Activating it, the world transformed.
The bland grays and greens of my cottage and field erupted into a symphony of soft light. Every blade of grass held a faint, verdant glow. The old stones of the house pulsed with a slow, earthy amber. The very air was alive, dancing with countless motes of mana like luminous dust.
It was breathtakingly beautiful. No sight in my previous life could compare.
I observed a fundamental truth: every living thing held mana. Even those who couldn't use magic—like commoners or pure Aura users—had a faint spark within them. Aura, I understood now, was a refined, specialized form of mana, broken down and reconstructed by the body's energy centers. The source was the same.
Emboldened, I saw the next logical step in my sensory arsenal. If I could enhance my vision, why not the other four senses? And if I could enhance them separately, perhaps they could be synthesized into something greater.
Over the next two days, I applied the same principle of focused mana infusion and willful experimentation.
· Enhanced Hearing (G): I learned to channel mana to my ears, amplifying distant sounds and filtering background noise.
· Enhanced Smell (G): Mana sharpened my olfactory receptors, allowing me to pick out individual scents from the complex tapestry of the wilderness.
· Enhanced Taste (G): A more niche skill, but useful for identifying potions or poisoned food.
· Enhanced Touch (G): I could feel vibrations in the air and ground with greater sensitivity, and gauge the texture and density of objects with pinpoint accuracy.
As I mastered the fifth skill, a familiar shift occurred within my Status. The four new skills and my Mana Eyes didn't just list separately; they merged.
[Skill: Fivefold Senses (F) acquired.]
[Appraisal: A synthesized sensory skill.
Active Effect: Consumes mana to enhance all five primary senses by 15%.
Passive Effect: Permanently increases baseline acuity of all five senses by 10%.]
The effect was immediate and profound. Even without activating the skill, the world was richer, sharper, more detailed. The passive boost was always on. When I did activate it, the transformation was staggering—sounds crystalized, scents told stories, and with my Mana Eyes active concurrently, I experienced a hyper-real, multi-layered perception of the world few could imagine.
This was a game-changer for any adventurer. It explained why seasoned dungeon delvers invested so heavily in these skills. The passive boost was a permanent upgrade to one's survivability.
The natural progression led my thoughts to the legendary Sixth Sense: Instinct. That couldn't be learned from a book or created through mana infusion. It was forged in the crucible of danger—in life-or-death fights, in the predatory silence of deep forests, in the trapped halls of dungeons. It was the hair-raising warning before an ambush, the gut feeling to dodge left instead of right. I would have to earn that the hard way. An E-rank dungeon would be my first real testing ground.
Becoming an Adventurer... The thought was tempting. At F-rank, I could register. They didn't care about class or element, only basic competency. It was the perfect cover for my activities and a direct path to the resources I desperately needed. But to rise in rank, to tackle the dungeons that held the opportunities I sought, my class and my C-rank Potential would become insurmountable walls.
The Seventh Sense—Mana Sense or Aura Sense—was the domain of D-rank and above. It was the natural evolution of building the energy core, the Mana Heart or Dantian. It allowed one to sense power levels, hidden presences, and the flow of energy in the environment without visual aid. A key marker of truly leaving the "apprentice" stage behind.
And I was capped at C-rank. The thought was a cold stone in my gut. All this innovation, all this clever skill fusion, would hit a hard ceiling. I could become the most optimized, creatively powerful C-rank in history… and still be obliterated by the first real monster from the novel's plot.
I needed a way to break my Potential limit. I knew from the novel such methods existed, but they were secrets guarded by empires, found in SS-rank dungeons, or tied to divine blessings.
As for the Eighth Sense the novel's protagonists stumbled upon… that was a realm of near-zero probability. It required specific, world-altering circumstances and cosmic luck. An artefact of impossible rarity might nudge the odds, but hoping for that was a fool's dream.
(Though, the senses of higher beings—Divine Sense, Draconic Sense, Demonic Sense—were a known, if unreachable, category. But that was a spoiler for another time.)
The euphoria of my sensory breakthrough faded, replaced by the cold, hard arithmetic of my situation. I had built exquisite tools, but I was trying to construct a fortress on a foundation of sand.
My next goal was no longer just learning or creating. It was far more fundamental.
I had to find a way to rewrite my destiny and shatter the C-rank ceiling. Before the clock ran out.