Deviant

Instead of phasing through Mage-casted fireballs or Imprinted weapons weaker than he was, he could only pass through nonmagical things like a normal wall or a person or sword.

After learning what his Inverted Loop did, Fate considered this a worthwhile trade-off.

He decided to dub this new pseudo-Master Body/Skill "Inverted Loop," in recognition of what it took to create it And his new, weaker intangibility, he'd just refer to as his Skill since it was the only active use of it that he had.

After all that, he was thankful that the Kernel connected to his eyes was easier to swallow.

The Kernal was birthed in a process called Deviation.

Deviation was much simpler than Jhana and relied on comprehension to be born.

When a Mage comprehended a Facet other than their own to a certain degree, approximately enough to become a Journeyman if they had that Facet, they would birth what was called a Deviant Skill, which was housed within a Deviant Kernel much like the one Fate felt within himself.

This Deviant Kernel was like a watered-down version of a Mage Seed, which itself was an un-Awakened Facet, and likewise existed on the same separate plane as a Mage's Facet.

The Deviant Skill was exactly like an Apprentice's Skill, and followed the same "Realm, Order, and Suborder" categorization.

Where it differed from a Mage's Skill was twofold. First, a Deviant Skill wouldn't get new traits or quirks when it evolved.

Second, a Deviant Skill was ranked by Grades like Imprints were since it wasn't reliant on the comprehension of their Facet.

A Mage's Deviant Skill couldn't be brought to a higher power through comprehending more of the parent Facet. Instead, its power would scale directly to the Mage's Stage and the quality of Mana it could feed on to work.

Despite the name, those with Deviant Skills weren't stigmatized or frowned upon from what Fate knew. If anything, they were praised as geniuses.

A Mage's mind wasn't equipped to contain or come to grips with the knowledge of a Facet other than their own. That didn't mean that they couldn't, but that it was much harder to do so.

Having a Facet meant having a receptacle to store everything you learned about that Facet.

It also meant having a natural talent for learning about said Facet, which was why comprehending even .001% – the required understanding to become a Journeyman – of something as vast and wide-ranging as Cognition was measured not in millennia, but decades, sometimes even just years.

Learning a Deviant Skill was like pushing a car without power or gasoline up a steep hill.

It was absurdly difficult, and you would sometimes stumble and have to start from the bottom of the hill, but once you got to the top, you could stop pushing and let the car rest without the laws of physics trying to bring it back down the hill.

The car in this case was a growing Deviant Kernel. The further up the hill you brought it, the more potential energy it had, or in other words, the larger the Kernel grew.

The top of the hill was the point the Kernel could sustain itself, and the stumble and subsequent car speeding back down the hill was the Kernel leaking the bigger it got.

At the same time, a Deviant Kernel required a Facet to sustain itself, which was the "maintenance" of the "car". You couldn't roll the car up the hill without wheels, could you?

Once a Deviant Kernel was strengthened sufficiently, it tethered itself to a Mage's Facet and essentially used a Facet's infinite information storage potential to contain the comprehension one had learned to birth it.

But first, one needed to reach such an area of expertise, which was why Deviant Skills were almost always birthed from large epiphanies.

Otherwise one would forget most of it shortly after learning it, the infantile Kernel leaking like a boat riddled with holes. Or in the previous analogy, rolling back down the hill.

This was also why mortals couldn't obtain Deviant Skills. Since they lacked Facets or Mana in general, they had no method of stopping the leakage. Mortals were, and sadly always would be, mortal.

Fate's Deviant Skill was from the Death Facet, which he supposed he comprehended as he was about to die and he swapped his body's natural state to one of death with Inverted Loop.

Compared to the complex mess that was his new Skill, his Deviant Skill was much simpler.

It was a Mental (Other) Deviant Skill and was the first use of his Mana that he could consider an offensive one.

By channeling Mana into his eyes and looking at someone, unimpeded by glasses or blindfolds or things like that, he could produce two results.

Those of a lower Stage than his own, which for the current Fate only included Apprentices and mortals, would fall dead on the spot after a single use.

Those at or above his Stage of Journeyman would get chills and be instilled with fear that would fog their thoughts as fear normally did.

The duration of this depended on the mental fortitude of his victim, but continued use of the Deviant Skill would stack, making them more and more afraid until they ran away or died of a heart attack.

When that heart attack would occur depended on the victim's Stage progression in relation to Fate's.

Those within the same Stage but with lower progression than Fate's would drop dead at around five uses, while those at or above could take anywhere from ten to twenty, with those of a higher Stage than Fate wouldn't die at all.

One "use" would cost as much as the average Spell on Ziobrun, which was around enough Mana to power one's Mage Reach for five seconds, though this varied.

Fate could keep his Mage Reach active for sixteen seconds continuously, so he'd have three uses before bordering empty, but since it was powered by Fate's own Mana, he could tap into his wand to fuel it.

That brought him up another five from the wand itself and another twenty from his Will Stone, for a total of 28, which wasn't too shabby.

The Deviant Skill was only of the Seed Grade as of that moment, as Fate was just a Journeyman, and since it was derived from Death and not Negativity, his wand couldn't increase its power or reduce its cost.

Despite this, he couldn't be happier with the Deviant Skill.