Explaining Skills

As Eclipse began to walk away from the shore with Coco back towards the portal, a thought struck him. Turning around he walked back to the water and walked a few feet into the water.

Reaching inside his inventory, Eclipse pulled out nine cards. Seven of them had an image of a violent looking clownfish, one of a snake with hundreds of centipede legs, and the last one was that of a skeleton in a pirate captain's attire.

"Shouldn't I have ten cards?" Eclipse thought to himself as he looked at his new summons. He then remembered he handed a card to Coco earlier while giving an excuse about him going silent when talking to the system.

"Hey Coco do you still have…?" Eclipse started to ask but stopped himself. This was because as he turned around he saw Coco hugging the card he gave her earlier while mumbling something to herself and giggling.

Eclipse thought he heard her mumble words like "gift" and "treasure it forever" but quickly dismissed it as his imagination and just went back to summoning his subordinates.

"Well if she wants to keep it, it doesn't matter that much since these Carnivorous Clownfish will soon swell in number." He thought to himself, crushing all of the cards.

Immediately the cards crumbled into falling dust that sparkled and reflected the light of the sun. Moments later a light began to engulf the general area before quickly fading away.

From the light appeared seven creepy looking tropical clownfish, a strange water snake centipede hybrid, and a skeleton that glowed an eerie green.

The school of clownfish seemed dazed for a moment before instantly swimming off into the distance towards the northern region of the first floor. The centipede was the second to recover and leave as it went straight to the eastern region where a watery forest expanded for countless miles.

"So much for even greeting their new master." Eclipse said watching eight of his new subordinates all disappear off into the distance.

"At least one among you had the decency to stay and greet their new master." Eclipse said, looking over at his new undead pirate captain who was easily the strongest among the subordinates he summoned. Looking closely at the skeleton he could sense an eerie aura coming off it.

"Is this from it having the potential to reach the rank of F+? Or is it from the skeleton being an undead?" He wondered.

After a few moments of analyzing each other the skeleton's jaw began to open. Even though it didn't have vocal cards, a deep and hoarse voice rang out from its moving mouth.

"Who the F^$# are you? Never mind it doesn't matter as I'm sure you're stunned at being able to bear witness to the resurrection of the glorious and almighty Jenkins Gold Hook! Pirate captain of the dread hook fleet! Scourge of the Seven Seas! The Pirate King!" He said, lifting his arms in the air to flex which only resulted in his right arm falling off.

Turning around, Eclipse just walked away back towards the portal entrance while ignoring the egotistic Jenkins that was still broadcasting his mighty feats and tales, not even noticing Eclipse had left or that he had lost an arm.

"Why can't I get one single normal subordinate that has the capability of having a conversation with me and isn't a complete lunatic." Eclipse mumbled as he walked towards the portal with Coco in tow.

"You have me master!" Coco said upon hearing Eclipse's rambling.

"You're right, but I will never see you as a subordinate of mine Coco. You will always be someone important to me so remember that." He said as he entered the clearing with the portal. If Eclipse had turned around when he said this, he would've seen Coco's Snow White face go cherry red when she heard his response.

"What's this?" Eclipse asked as he walked up to the portal and saw an object next to it. The object was a gem that floated a few feet above the ground. It was gold and white in color and was made of countless crystal prisms that reflected the light of the surroundings.

The crystal also radiated it's own warm and colorful glow that seemed to pulse in rhythm to a heartbeat . The shape of the crystal was similar to that of a star you would see in the night sky shining brightly to light up the night for those that were lost.

"This is the core of your Abyss, it is made up from your very being by condensing your soul into a crystal form. It is then able to act as a conduit that grows the Abyss and keeps it stable by linking the Abyss to you. As you grow and get stronger, so will the Abyss. Each rank you go up you'll upgrade the Abyss by a rank which unlock new features like a new floor each rank." The system responded.

"Since you're going outside I will take the liberty of transporting your core to a far corner of the first floor where it will be hidden in the depths and guarded by an entity that I spent most of my current powers to control. Beware that I only had enough power to force the creature to guard the crystal, I didn't have enough power to specify from what so the guardian will attack anything that goes near it. This includes subordinates of this floor or even you, so avoid going near your core for now until you get stronger." The system said.

Upon finishing its explanation, the floating crystal disappeared from sight as if teleported away.

"Great, now that my core has been hidden away we can go out and level up now Coco!" Eclipse said.

"Yes let's go enjoy ourselves!" She said charging ahead of Eclipse through the portal at the center of the encirclement of marble pillars.

Sigh

"She didn't even let me explain where the portal leads to or the plan." Eclipse sighed as he followed after her through the portal.

~~~~

Exiting the portal the light from four suns brightly shone in the sky indicating that the day had just begun. Ignoring the beautiful sights around him, Eclipse quickly scanned his surroundings for Coco until he spotted her down near the bottom of the hill. She was walking in a direction towards the center of the island.

Quickly running after her, Eclipse caught up to her in only a few seconds before grabbing her hand and pulling her away from the center of the island.

"You don't want to go over there. At the center of the island is a tree that grows a single rare fruit once a year, and it isn't that time yet. Also there are powerful guardians that spawn around it and protect it year round that we aren't even able to hold a candle to yet, so lets go hunting elsewhere." Eclipse explained while leading Coco in a different direction.

While leading Coco away, Eclipse couldn't help but notice that while she wasn't resisting him, Coco still hadn't taken her eyes off the direction she was walking towards originally. The fur on her tails stood on end, and Eclipse could've sworn he saw her eyes glowing for a moment.

"Earth to Coco, anyone in there?" He asked while leaving the forest and walking on the beach towards the shoreline.

Finally breaking from her trance, Coco quickly noticed that Eclipse had taken hold of her hand while directing her towards the shoreline and started blushing. She quickly looked in a different direction while asking, "Yeah I'm all good now, so what is the plan?"

"Well from here we'll have to swim across the lake since we don't have a raft or boat. From there we can go hunting some weaker monsters in the jungle on the other side." Eclipse said getting ready to go dive in the water.

Before he got the chance though, Coco walked ahead of him once again towards the water. As she put her foot out towards the waveless glass lake, she stepped forward and stepped down as if she was walking on normal ground.

The water beneath and around where her right foot landed froze instantaneously forming a flat glass-like surface to walk on.

"Stay close to me as this lake seems to be strange. Once I get around five feet away from the ice it will start to melt in mere seconds." Coco said, waving for Eclipse to hop on the ice and follow her.

Eclipse hurriedly hopped and walked closely behind her as she paved a wave for them across the lake. Like this, the two of them walked on in silence. Except it was anything but silent inside Eclipse's head.

"How interesting, for a person to be able to freeze the lake using the skill 'Glacial Magic' they would need to have at least an intermediate tier mastery over the skill at the minimum." The system said as it observed Coco freezing the lake a short distance around her.

"Skill Mastery? I've been meaning to ask you about how the skills of this world work, so do you care to give me a brief rundown while we're walking?" Eclipse mentally asked the system.

"Sure. There are two main ways to divide skills. The first is rarity which goes Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Mythical, Fabled, and Primordial. The more rare a skill is, the less likely people are to have it and the more innately powerful that skill is compared to others of a lower rank." The system said.

"The other important thing to know about skills is the mastery aspect. All skills no matter the rarity can be mastered up to eight different levels. These levels are Inadequate, Novice, Intermediate, Adept, Master, Heroic, Divine, and Origin."

"If a skill is common rank, but the mastery of the skill has reached novice, then it is on par with an uncommon skill that is only at the mastery rank of inadequate. But if that uncommon skill's mastery goes up to novice also, then it'll be more powerful then the common skill of the same mastery rank." The system said, finishing it's brief explanation.

"So then does that mean that it's impressive for Coco to be able to freeze the lake?" Eclipse asked.

"Yes because I'm able to tell she is using the skill 'Glacial Magic' which is an epic ranked skill, she needs to have a mastery of Intermediate to freeze the lake. Otherwise it would take a mythical ranked ice related skill of the lowest mastery to freeze the lake this way." The system said.

"This is impressive for two reasons. The first is she already has a skill mastered to that mastery rank at level 1. The second is she is able to constantly use this skill at a low level which makes one wonder what her stats are for her to be able to not even look phased in the slightest." The system said as it once again tried to see Coco's status window but yet again failed.

"Well that at least makes me feel safe to be out in the jungle with her then." Eclipse said as he and Coco neared the other side of the giant lake finally.

Stepping onto shore, the two of them looked ahead at the dense vegetation in front of them.

"I can't wait to level up for the first time and defeat my first monster!" Eclipse excitedly said as the two of them walked into the jungle.

Meanwhile, as the two of them began to enter the jungle a pair of hungry red eyes watched them from the distance following their every move.