Chapter 33. Dragonbone

The two boxes hung in the air in front of me side by side, where no one else could see them.

[ Impenetrable Skin ] and [ Healing Factor ].

I had to pick one. It was already in me — the blood had seen to that before I’d finished swallowing — and the only thing left to decide was what it would make of me.

“Do you feel something?” my father asked, watching my face closely.

“I… yes, I think so.”

He nodded, satisfied as I looked back at the two boxes.

[ Impenetrable Skin ]. Skin that turned a blade, thickening year on year until nothing short of a spell got through. There was a plain sense to it. A body that couldn’t be opened was a body no one could take anything out of. In a fight it was a safe pick, because you didn’t have to survive a wound that never happened.

But I’d never been the one getting hit. Bellos had spent years teaching me how not to be where the blow landed, and it had worked; the entrance trials had only made me more sure of it. I’d watched that whole field of students and known, without any particular arrogance, that if I were serious not one of them would lay a finger on me. And that was before [Greater Focus]. With it, the idea of standing there and letting something connect hard enough to matter felt less like a plan and more like a failure on my part.

Besides, I liked my skin the way it was. The texture was fine, and I didn’t especially want it going to leather.

Which left me with [ Healing Factor ], I supposed. That one closed wounds instead of refusing them without the help of mana. It meant bleeding first, every time. A pain the skin would have spared me.

But from what I understood, it did more than close cuts. It meant the more it evolved, the less I’d fall ill, and while I’d rarely been sick, I hadn’t forgotten the last time. Nine years old, three nights of it, Nana staying up beside my bed reading to me long after the rest of the house had gone to sleep so I wouldn’t lie there alone with it. She’d been kind about it, but It had still been miserable.

And there was the practical side, which I liked better the longer I looked at it. A body that mended fast was a body that recovered from training fast. I could push harder, longer, and be ready again sooner, and that meant getting stronger quicker than anyone who had to wait on sore muscles and healing bruises the ordinary way.

So I chose the [Healing Factor].

The box immediately folded shut and something warm moved through me, starting low in my spine where the blood had settled and spreading out to the ends of me.

Ding!

New skill acquired: [ Healing Factor ] — Lv. 1 (0%) (Rank S)

Effects include:

— Wounds close without mana or effort. Rate scales with skill level.
— Gradual immunity to illness, infection and poison.
— Slowed aging. Extended lifespan.

Note: At level 1, you will heal 1.5 times faster than normal. Grows through use. The body learns healing by healing. So, get hurt often.

I… I wasn’t unhappy with this result, all things considered.

“Howl?”.