"Don't be too happy yet. This is still the weakest level of this skill; I'll start increasing the pressure until I've reached the maximum effect." Chronos said.
Lyla braced herself before nodding that she was ready. Increasing the pressure Chronos expected her to start struggling but she didn't look like anything had changed.
"Sill feeling good?"
"Yeah, actually it feels even better than when we started. I think I'm getting used to it."
"That's good, then I'll raise it to the highest level I can."
She smiled showing she was ready.
Crrck, cssh.
The floor froze as the pressure climbed. Everyone else in the room subconsciously backed up against the walls under the effects of the pressure. None of them understood what was going on with that skill, but their instincts told them that they didn't want to be caught in its area of effect.
But Lyla's smile never left her face.
"This doesn't feel bad. This power comes from your bloodline, right?" Chronos nodded. "I think your bloodline recognizes me as an ally so it's lessening the effect of [Cold-Moon Pressure]."
That didn't make sense. Bloodlines weren't alive and couldn't recognize friends or allies... wait, didn't some bloodlines come from powerful individuals? If the creator of the bloodline recognized someone as an ally would the bloodline be gentler on them?
That might be possible and Chronos already knew that his bloodline came from a very powerful being, he just didn't know who it was.
When he realized this, he heard the mysterious voice he had talked with before chuckling in his mind once more. That practically confirmed it for him, whoever had created his bloodline recognized Lyla as an ally.
"I think you're right. How severely are you affected by the pressure? Can you endure it without your armor?"
Canceling her skill, she felt the chilly air start to freeze her, but the mental pressure was a gentle background noise now.
"There's no mental pressure, but the chilly air is still freezing me. I'll need my armor to deal with that."
"Oh, that means the mental pressure comes directly from my bloodline while the chilly air is a side effect? I'll need to look into this."
"Hm even if it's a side effect it would have to come from a very powerful source to create such a strong reaction in the physical world."
Sigh, that was one more thing he needed to look into, the things he needed to look into were really starting to build up.
"If you're done with me, I need to look through the void skills for something to destroy energy."
"That sounds rough, good luck with it." Lyla laughed as she went to practice her new skill.
Turning to his system Chronos pulled up the void section, like all of the other sections there were dozens of skills he could purchase but most of them wouldn't help him with his goal of creating a spatial spear.
He couldn't help wondering why there were only dozens of skills when the system was supposed to be formed from hundreds if not thousands of people's skills when a prompt appeared in his vision.
{Would you like to view the unrestricted skill section?
Yes / No}
He stared at the prompt, getting a bad feeling about it, then selected yes.
The system screen expanded in his vision to show thousands of different skills all related to the void attribute he had been looking into.
It was no wonder the system only showed them a few dozen at a time, when there were so many options you could easily get lost in the skills for hours.
It seemed that the skills it showed first were the ones that the user was the most compatible with.
Rather than shrink the section Chronos decided to limit them to the third rank and lower, which decreased it from thousands of skills to a few hundred. That was much more manageable.
Reading through them he started to understand why most of these skills were in the restricted skills section. Many of them required special bloodlines or items to use and even more had severe side effects that could kill the user.
"This isn't good. If Sariah finds the restricted section for curses, we'll all be in trouble. System, is there a way to limit who has access to the skills with the worst side effects?" Chronos wasn't sure if it would respond but it didn't hurt to ask.
{The restricted section is only available to those who have met the pre-requisites. Miss Sariah has not met them and will not be permitted in the restricted section as per an agreement with Sir Gregory.}
"Good, also send a suggestion to Hrólmir to separate the restricted section into harmful skills and those that require items or bloodlines. Having them all mixed together like this is confusing."
{It shall be done. The system would like to point out that one can already sort the skills using key words and descriptions of what the user is seeking.}
"Thank you, system."
It was only after he had finished talking with the system that he realized he had been speaking with it at all.
The increase in his mental abilities and perhaps the remnants of Sariah's [Wandering Thoughts] curse were causing him to easily get distracted right now. Even if it had led to the discovery that the system could respond he needed to focus on the skills in this moment.
Facing the skills section again he sent it a mental command to sort and show him the skills that could destroy or refine miasma or energy. Once more he was facing a few dozen skills based on the void element.
As he read through them, he once again understood why these skills had been hidden when he first viewed the void element.
The original skills imbued a tiny portion of the power of the void into whatever skill you were using allowing that skill or item to gain some of the living part of void, but these skills brought pure void into existence.
Pure void destroyed any matter or energy that was too weak to endure its power, including the caster. It couldn't differentiate between friend and foe, valuable or trash. Anything that was too weak was destroyed.
And in a living world that meant almost anything that existed.