Chapter 14：Enhancement

Icarus stared at his dad. He didn't know exactly how he ended up sitting down on the ground in his new room, with his hand in a bowl of water. He tilted his head at his father.

Daedalus heaved a heavy sigh and before staring at his son with raised eyebrows. 'Did you zone out again Icarus.'

'Um...yes?' He rubbed the back of his head as a shade of red covered his cheeks. His father smiled at this and gently pinched his cheeks. 'Well, pay attention then. I'll go through it all again, from the very start.' Icarus nodded, creasing his brow to show his attention.

'Everything that we do has consequences. Even the smallest actions like petting an animal or scratching an itch.' Daedalus paused to let Icarus absorb that sentence. He started again when Icarus nodded. 'As a result we leave a mark on this world. Now, there are two things that come from this mark.' He held up his index finger. 'The very first thing is a special kind of energy; Karma. It is invisible and essentially all around us. It is unusable however, we can harvest it. By doing an action. Every action that you take leaves a mark, in-exchange, you gain an equivalent amount of karma. If it is a big action, you gain a lot of karma, if it is a small action, you gain a smaller amount of karma.'

Icarus nodded, signalling him to carry on. 'So, every action that you make leaves a mark. The mark also causes the universe to notice you. The more marks you leave, the more the universe notices you. The physical representation of this is a force field around you.' Icarus tilted his head to signal his confusion, Daedalus smiled and reached out his hand. As Icarus watched in awe, his hand began turning into black rock slowly. He pointed to it, 'this is a force field skill known as Enhancement. It requires condensing the force field.'

'Wow!' Icarus made an exaggerated expression which made Daedalus crack up.

'Alright Icarus, before I can teach you anything though, you need to sense your force field.' He took Icarus' right hand and put it in the water bowl. 'To do that, it would help if you were in two different mediums at the same time. Try to feel the similarity between your left hand and your right hand.' Icarus nodded and closed his, trying to focus. The differences were apparent right off the bat; his right hand was cold, it felt wet, it was as if it was surrounded by liquid. His left hand was the complete opposite; it felt like body temperature, it was dry and it wasn't surrounded by anything.

Ding!

Icarus flinched, which caused Daedalus eyebrows to shoot up as well. 'Did you sense it already?' He asked Icarus clearly excited. He nodded at this. In that split second between opening his eyes and nodding his head, the completed quests menu was pulled up. That was also when he realised that he hadn't received any quests for the past 24 hours. In the middle of all the things that had to do with the accident he missed it. He was clearly surprised when he read the quest;

Hidden Quest: Sense the Force Field, youngling

Try to sense the force field

Reward: Sense (Initiated)

The first though that came to his mind after viewing it was, 'there is no time limit or penalty!' It felt liberating when there wasn't a sword hanging above his neck constantly. He opened up his status screen and found that there was a new "Skills" section. Opening the skills section, there was only one skill; Sense. 'How do I use this?' He was confused since he hadn't felt very different after gaining the skill. 'Okay, lets try this; Sense!' He yelled the name of the skill in his mind and immediately he sensed a slick feeling all over his body. It was light but definitely present. 'I guess thats sense?' He felt somewhat confused and stared up at his father.

'What does it feel like?'

'Like a slick oily feeling all over your body.'

'Good!' His father nodded, his eyes practically glowing. 'Now, I want you to try to control that slick oily feeling and try to pool it towards only one particular part of your body.'

Icarus nodded before trying to concentrate once again. He wasn't able to control it instantly but he could certainly tell that there was progress being made. At first he sensed it, second try nothing happened, third, fourth, fifth, six…twentieth try nothing happened.

On the twenty-first try, something seemed to finally clicked. He felt the slightest amount of movement on the oily file. The amount was only the tiniest bit possible but he felt it; movement. That was also when another ringing sound went off inside his head. Bringing up his menu, he had a feeling that there was a change in the skills section and it was indeed as he had predicted; he had gained a new skill called Enhancement (Initiated). 'Enhancement!' Thanking god that he didn't have to yell the name of every skill he used, Icarus tried to pool the oily layer into a localised area over his right fist and indeed he was successful.

An ashen grey colour took over fists and he felt a strange strength flowing into it. He was definitely surprised at this phenomenon and looked at his father, only to find him staring with an agape mouth at Icarus' fist. He could guess the reason. Although he had made a lot of attempts, they had all been done in a fraction of a second. All in all, it had taken him less than half a minute to go from sensing his force field to learning the Enhancement skill. He was guessing that this was some kind of record.