Some days after, inside the New Yorker, the group sat in the room that had been made into a sort of meeting spot, conversing on their next actions. Achilles was forward, preferring to spend more time on controlling his abilities, while Keido and Maria were pushing to dive into the river and challenge enough dungeons to rank Maria up to F-rank, like the rest of them.
Meanwhile, Kimsung and Heidi both sided with Achilles, since it had only been a few days since they've achieved F-rank, so it would be wise to take it slow. After another long while, the group decided to train their abilities in the open space Central Park provided, especially after the group had cleared it out between dungeon diving.
Keido reluctantly agreed to it, on the condition that they would enter a dungeon regardless if they found one on the way or nearby.
The condition was accepted of course, and the group took the A-train to 59th Street, leaving the station and heading into the park. Achilles went off quite far, saying he'd be at the lake and could call if they needed him. The rest decided to stay together and test out their abilities on the playground nearby.
The group, minus Achilles, had decided to stop at the ice rink on 60th Street, which would usually be closed, or an ice-rink during winter times. It was the perfect location for Heidi to train 'Breakdown' and there were many different animals for Keido to start learning how to control the Dove. Kimsung meanwhile, meditated nearby on the rocks, attempting to control his will, and perhaps make a breakthrough on creating his domain.
In his mind, the sooner he could unlock his doman, the safer he'd be if conflict happened.
With Achilles, who had begun to wreathe himself in his barriers as a new armor, arrived at the lake, and sat down on the west side of it, on a simple wooden bench right at the water.
He quite liked the view, but not the weather, since it was now officially Fall season. He slowly took off his shades, and activated 'Construct Scanning'. Almost immediately, his mind was flooded with the entire view around him, and all its minimal details.
The small and big waves on the water, the ripples underwater formed by fish and turtles, the gentle twitch of leaves as their stems slowly began to weaken, signalling their disconnection from the tree. The water as it filled the very roots of the trees, and as it rose upwards, not spread out to the yellowing leaves, but stored inside in preparation for winter. He could even see the minuscule dust particles flying in the air as they landed on anything and everything.
Not only that, but he could see that the moss on the rocks across to the east side of the river began to fade in color, the ants scurrying about as they collected the last bits of food for the winter, just like the squirrels, which had become fatter to survive the cold.
All of this was seen in merely ten seconds, and it overwhelmed his untrained mind, nearly destroying it. He could see all the details, literally. He could see, as fallen leaves decompose so slowly, how a squirrel's stomach acids melted down the acorn it had just eaten, the small mandibles of the ants as they foraged around, and he swore he could see something more.
He turned off 'Construct Scanning' immediately, deeming it a power his mind was not yet ready for. Seconds after, he screamed in anguish and fell forward onto the sand, his barriers all dropping like a cloud of flour as he curled up in a ball, the extreme pain in his eyes and mind even greater than when he scanned one of Yeager College's buildings.
Nature, or rather a vast space like this, was not safe for him to properly train his ability. If he could think straight, he'd have thought about practicing with smaller things first, but he was currently incapable of such things.
One could imagine it like the PTSD of a veteran, since Achilles would remember all that he'd seen using his second ability for a very long time, not that he knew at the time. 'Construct Scanning' gave him the memory of an elephant when it came to the designs, small changes, and movements made in his field of vision when creating a blueprint.
Luckily, Achilles was not in the mental state to keep it as a design, or else it would be saved in his mind for as long as he lived, as visible as the sun at high noon.
"Well, you seem to have some difficulty there, my son. Would you like some help?" A kind, soft, female voice asks, sitting down next to Achilles, covering his eyes, a certain frequency playing in the air as his mind was forcibly silenced.
He opened his eyes in a panic, feeling a sense of danger coming from all sides. The air felt heavy. Actually, not heavy, but rather, more intense than normal. The sun, as it shone in the sky, felt brighter than before. He didn't know who the voice was until he saw them.
Green, emerald eyes just like his, staring back at him. Those emerald eyes came with a soft smile, and her kind face, and the rest of her. It was a woman, staring down at him. The sun was blocked out by a tree as it strangely began to move, covering the harsh light of the sun from hitting his face, and the world around him seemed more alive.
With the rest of the group
Keido was watching a Blue Jay as it chirped and perched upon a branch. He sent the Dove towards it, watching as the Dove entered its body. The Blue Jay looked to struggle for a second before flying over and perching on Keido's fingers, nuzzling into his hand lovingly.
It acted as if he were its long-lost love, as if he were the most important thing in his life. Keido smirked happily. His progress was growing steadily, and he was sure this ability would be useful in the next few dungeons, to perhaps limit the hostility of the monsters inside. If he perhaps combined the Worm and the Dove, many monsters might perhaps outright leave him alone.
Keido himself thought it would be quite a good combination move, but there were obvious flaws. The most important flaw he could think of was the number of targets he could affect. Individually, he could affect two lifeforms. But if he used the combination move, it'd only be one.
Keido looked at the small blue bird in his hand and released it from his charm. It quickly flew away in a panicked flutter, nearly hitting Keido in the face with its wings as it fled. He sighed before walking to where his sister was, down in the ice rink.
Heidi had finally managed to figure out how to use both her abilities, making the water in a cup condense into ice and melt back into water shortly after. She had familiarized herself with it so that it no longer took the amount of mana like the first few attempts she made.
Her first Ability, 'Combine', allowed her to combine things to make something else out of them. With her rudimentary knowledge of chemistry, she knew that ice was just frozen water, so it was the easiest way to improve her ability Tiers without much trouble, or so she thought.
It was described in the novel that easy methods to raise the Tier of one's Ability were almost impossible to achieve, because raising a Tier meant you had to struggle significantly, not just cheat your way around it.
Whatever created the systems she and everyone else used clearly wanted people to work for their power and to grow a mindset of hating shortcuts, from what she remembered. Now that she thought of this, it would most likely be akin to wasting her time and mana if she continued playing with the water.
Heidi looked down at the plastic cup in her hand and decided it would be better to use her skill on the bottle's own make instead, since it was composed of much more complex chemicals.
When she broke it down, the man's expenditure was quite great, reaching almost a hundred mana, which she thought was quite steep. Of course, to Achilles, with his cultivation methods, this was only a fraction of his now seventeen thousand and sixty mana reserves. The technique truly was an extremely powerful method, and it had an equally debilitating drawback.
As she continued to practice, now with a recyclable paper cup, she was surprised to see the same power that she had seen when she broke down the plastic water bottle, along with the paper of the cup. Now that she thought about it, it was quite strange that the cup was able to hold liquids and not soak them up like it was supposed to, so perhaps she had figured out why it was possible.
Congratulations! You've reached Mid Tier with your Ability!
When Heidi heard the announcement in her system, she smiled. It turned out that she was right after all. The higher the complexity of the skill usage, the faster one can raise both their Ability Tier and increase their understanding of it.