Powers In Play

Skills, abilities, talents, and magics, What is the difference between these four?

Let's start with skills, usually acquired through skill books, once someone absorbs the skill by performing a ritual described in said skill book, they gain the full power of that skill, they are only limited in their understanding of said skill.

Also, the skill book always turns to dust after the ritual is finished, so It can't be reused.

The trick is that you can't be sure what kind of skill you will get, since the books only detail the ritual.

Skill books are rarely found in dungeons, skill books are what adventures mainly look for as loot from the dungeon, as they are a large instant increase in power, even if they don't know what kind of power they are getting.

All skills are balanced, however, there is a group of skills that depending on the user could prove insanely powerful or completely useless.

These skills have a drawback, or condition for use, in some cases maybe both.

But in return, they have clearly better effects compared to regular skills.

For example, my Morph skill, Its condition is murder, but in return, I get to become the person or animal I killed and also get access to the talents and racial features of the person or animal I killed.

A regular version of Morph exists and it's called Transform a side character uses it. Transform allows the user to freely transform their looks in any way that they want, but it doesn't give access to racial features or talents for that matter.

At the time I got Morph, I wasn't sure if I was capable of murder, turns out I was, and so the skill awarded me.

Now If someone incapable of murder got Morph, they would never use it. At most they'd be able to change into the form of a bug they accidentally stepped on.

Enough about skills let's talk abilities.

The short answer is, they are the counterpart to skills and require rigorous training.

The long answer is abilities are the accumulation of effort, and of course, talent helps, like how my Mana Control and Alex's Mana Sense helped me get Higher Mana Conductivity.

When Alex awakened mana he got Standard Mana Conductivity with the help of his Mana Sense, but he stagnated in this aspect since he couldn't control mana very well and focused his efforts elsewhere.

The fun thing about abilities is that you can create your abilities or personalize pre-existing ones.

This is what Marianne teaches in her class.

Her current rank is A+, she got so far because of her hard work and creative approach to abilities.

Okay, let's talk talent.

Well, talent is just that talent, on certain occasions a new talent can blossom but that is incredibly rare. In the one thousand chapters I wrote it happened three times throughout the story.

Anything can be a talent, it was the same on earth.

And now magic.

There is no standard for magic, in fact, most of the information about magic in this world is incorrect, no it would be more right to say that the information is inapplicable to the masses.

The reason for this is that magic chooses its wielder, they and only they can train their magic to its fullest potential.

The person chosen by magic can teach it to other people to a plethora of different results, someone might comprehend none of the material, and someone else might comprehend close to 100% but never fully 100%.

Magics that choose their wielder are concepts. To explain this better, let's say Fire Magic chooses you are not just wielding fire you are wielding the concept of fire.

This is what makes magic magical.

In a way, magic is like a mix of skills and abilities as it is both an instantaneous increase in strength limited by your understanding, but also something impacted by hard work and talent.

Lastly, I want to talk about the most important historical facts.

In this world, 3 centuries ago, there used to be several kingdoms, the two largest ones being The Gameciel Kingdom and The Rosaria Kingdom.

With the sudden emergence of monster nests, dungeons, expanded dungeons, mana, and magic.

Many countries fell and many lives were lost.

Gameciel Kingdom showed itself to be the strongest as it swiftly adapted and adopted the use of mana in its military.

There were many talks about the situation.

Ultimately The Gameciel Kingdom became The Gameciel Empire because the other kingdoms faced the choice of annihilation or coming under Gameciel, they chose the latter, they abandoned their royal status and accepted the various noble statuses that the now-formed Gameciel Empire offered to more easily persuade the now former royal families.

The only kingdom that refused to come under The Gameciel Empire was The Rosaria Kingdom.

The proud high elves of The Rosaria Kingdom could never be under a ruler that's not themselves.

They concluded that their option meant certain doom.

During one of the battles with the monster hordes, a single human proved himself as the strongest being on Htra-e, he killed every single monster, meticulously like a well-oiled machine for monster extinction. He wielded a finely crafted artifact in which he engraved his name. It was said that he suffered no wounds from that battle.

This reignited the spirits of the Rosaria military.

After a few more battles he disappeared, he gave Rosaria enough time to stand on their own two feet, and as if he finished what he set out to do he disappeared like he never existed. Atlas Laerious never existed.

As expected, since then his legend has been passed down from generation to generation as a hero like no other.

Because of his actions, The Rosaria Kingdom is the only other nation besides The Gameciel Empire. The continent is now divided between The Wastelands that the monsters occupied, the second largest after The Wastelands being The Gameciel Empire, and the smallest nation on Htra-e The Rosaria Kingdom which shares a small border with The Wastelands.

The two nations formed an alliance to exterminate the monsters and take back the land that the monsters occupied, but progress was slow because monster nests and dungeons can appear anywhere randomly so both nations agreed to maintain the border with The Wastelands while clearing the dungeons that were inside of their borders.

Only when the citizens were safe did the two nations make a plan to take back the land.

Now three centuries later, half of The Wastelands has been conquered by the two nations. They judged that going deeper into The Wastelands would be too dangerous since the deeper they went the stronger and smarter the monsters, The two nations came up with a plan to create a specialized school for the sole purpose of nurturing talent, but they uncreatively decided to call it Nurture.

The Rosaria Kingdom bacame The Rosaria Empire.

And now Nurture will soon begin to operate.