Well, while the skill [Nuclear Fusion] was already disproportionately strong, it got blown even more out of proportion thanks to the next passive skill [Ethereal Reservoir]. Its effect was as simple as an effect can possibly be: enlarge my natural mana reserves by a factor of x3.0.

  Reading this immediately cleared a large part of my confusion. The large jump in mana capacity wasn't just because I now have a legendary class, but instead because of this skill. Since that skill had a level, I guessed that the factor was probably a tenth of the level the skill was at. While it could scale differently, having a factor of 3 at level 30 was too much of a coincidence to justifiably assume anything but that.

  Anyway, while the skill wasn't the most flashy one to have and wouldn't do much on its own, it was incredibly potent when paired with a percentual mana generation like the one that [Nuclear Fusion] provided me.

  Unlike the previous two skills, however, my third passive skill was a complete mystery to me. While the name [Indomitable Mind] gave some insights into the nature of the skill, the description was a bit disappointing.

  [Indomitable Mind:

  A mind like steel in flaming rain. A fortress of mind weathers the storm inane. In ash of flame and tides of wind, break the waves, untainted by the scourges that sinned, an effigy of graves.]

  Like, come on, what the hell? Could you possibly be any less clear on whatever that is supposed to mean? At least give me a minimal textual description apart from just the flavor text, okay?

  It has something to do with fortifying my mind a making it stronger or whatever. The last line sounded slightly ominous, but I ignored that for now. Those texts have always had a hang for needless dramatizations like these anyway.

  Since I probably won't be able to interpret anything more out of this skill, I quickly moved on to the final passive skill I had remaining, namely [Regalia: Celestial Anthelion], the evolved version of my halo, which surprisingly vanished from being listed in my active skills.

  [Regalia: Celestial Anthelion

  The counter sun, an anchor in the flow of fate. A crown adorned with radiance and power, a symbol of hope in the face of death. A champion as its trait and brilliance in the hour, endowed with confidence, enlightened flower. Imperfect and unblemishable by nature, it holds strong beyond your very last breath.

  [Mana Reserve] 0/30000

  [Favor of the Sun]: You are the sun, and the sun may be you. For you, it will always stand favorably. Passively convert absorbed heat and light back to mana.

  [Anchor of [unknown]]: Anchors your [unknown] in [unknown]. [unknown]. Enables [unknown] remain indefinitely and [unknown] native. Allows [unknown] in the event of [unknown]. Will trigger automatically. (Hint: Exact effect largely unknown.)]

  Thanks for the very helpful hint there at the end, I couldn't possibly have guessed that. The skill had always been rather cryptic, but this evolution certainly didn't make it any clearer. If anything, it's now a lot more cryptic than before. Isn't the sun kind of fixed in its position? How the hell would it ever always stand favorably for me? What does that even mean exactly? Will my enemies always be blinded by it somehow?

  Also, I am apparently the sun, but the sun is only maybe me? Wouldn't something like that fit better in a purposefully cryptic flavor text than an actual description?

  And what the hell is [Anchor of [unknown]]? This feels more like a middle school French exam where you fill in the blanks with verbs in the correct tense rather than a description given out by the system. So much vital information is redacted that it might as well just not tell me anything. Some kind of anchoring effect that does whatever and at least one secondary effect that triggers automatically at unknown conditions, absolutely fantastic.

  Also not a single word about its new appearance, which, while not that important, would have been nice to know. At least that information would have been more useable than whatever I actually got.

  Anyways, moving on from that. While having four passive skills sounded impressive and all, it all boiled down to having two unknown effects and three effects related to mana capacity and regeneration. Maybe a bit overkill, but more mana was always great, no? I couldn't wait to see what a supercharged mana bomb holding over 60k mana could achieve.

  Coming to the active skills, though, I didn't even need to read the description to know what [Sunfire] could do. It was the skill I was by far the most familiar with, and using it was no different than using my arms or legs, just as if it was part of my body. Well, since my body was now a direct expression of my soul, and since skills and stuff should be deeply related to the soul, maybe that expression was a lot closer to the truth than expected.

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  Invoking the familiar fire into the palm of my hand, I watched as a brilliant flame danced beautifully in the windless cave, illuminating the cave in a warm orange. It was the same color as my hair and reminded me of the color of the sun during a sunset. It was mesmerizing in a way that few things could match. Its color was technically very similar to that of a mundane fire, but it had something otherworldly about it that made it very distinct and also very obviously special.

  It was also incredibly hot, but I was probably close to entirely immune against heat and fire, especially so against my own. Still, the skill wasn't identical to what it had been before. I thought I could already manipulate it quite well before, but it felt like I was struggling to walk with stilts compared to what it felt like now. Every manipulation I tried out responded immediately, and even filling the entire cavern with strands of my fire didn't strain my mind in the slightest.

  After playing around with it for a while, I snuck a peak at my remaining mana on my status sheet. I had been at it for maybe 15 minutes, so I was really surprised to find [Mana: 36,030/36,030 | 29,938/30,000].

  Just five seconds later and I was back to full already. I had probably absorbed back quite a bit of my expended mana, but it was still a bit surprising. Maybe it should have been expected since [Sunfire] was probably a lot more efficient now and my mana regeneration way better than before, but it was really hard to judge when not having all the detailed information necessary.

  Moving on to something I was very excited to see, I used [Identify] on the single completely new skill level one skill I had, [Empress of the Skies]. I was, in fact, extremely excited about this one. If this skill screamed anything, it was flying. I could technically fly already through misuse of [Sunfire], but that just wasn't the same. Similar to how piloting a plane didn't make one feel as if they truly had wings, I'd just be a passenger in my plane of fire with that skill.

  ... Also, having magical wings was just very cool in general, which I definitely wouldn't say no to. I had the halo already, so a pair of wings would just tie it all together, right?

  [Empress of the Skies:

  Take to the skies, ascending the pyre. With wings made of gold and scorching hot fire. A symbol of freedom known by all, the sea of blue like a planar wall. Not flight by wing a law to assume, break through the limit and flowers will bloom.

  Manifest a pair of wings on your back.]

  That's it for the description? The flavor text hints at something beyond just flight, so what can the wings actually do? While the flavor text was somewhat helpful here, the actual description was totally useless. While it confirms my first guess about this skill, it does nothing more than that.

  Oh well, I shouldn't let this taint my excitement. Time to try it out, I guess. A cave probably wasn't the best environment to learn how to fly, but it could be worse, I guess. This one was at least somewhat spacious.

  Testingly, I carefully invoked the skill. Immediately, the cave became slightly more lit as the glow from my newly grown wings joined the light emitting from my halo. Unlike my halo, though, I could actually see a large part of the wings since the majority of the wingspan was in my field of view when turning my head. They seemed to be made of the same material that my halo was made of, though a lot softer and feathery than the otherwise completely solid halo.

  Even in the slightly folded state they were by default, they already spanned over a meter in each direction. Carefully, I tried spreading them out for my first test. The control came intuitively, though it felt a bit like I imagined moving an entirely new muscle must feel like. It was awkward since I wasn't used to it yet, but I clumsily managed to spread them out entirely soon enough.

  Slowly flapping my wings once, I rose into the air, completely defying the laws of gravity and flight dynamics in the process. I didn't sink down again, even without continuously flapping my feathery friends. Only when I canceled the skill and my wings dispersed back into pure mana did I fall back down from my position just a few meters above the ground.

  If I was being honest, I basically expected something like that to happen. While I thought my wings were sufficiently big aesthetically speaking, they weren't nearly large enough to support flight from a physics perspective. This was fine, though. The flavor text had already hinted at the more symbolic meaning of the wings over any actual physical relevance, and I was completely fine with that.

  Still, genuine flight was exciting on a level that few other things could compare to. Within minutes, I was already back to practicing my new flight ability within the large cavern I was currently in. Apparently I needed to flap my wings only when I wanted to accelerate or decelerate, or when I wanted to turn, though I found out that turning correctly required finer adjustments than just haphazardly flapping.

  Sadly, though, the cave wasn't nearly large enough to actually try out high speeds. The one time I tried, I immediately smacked against the wall on the other side, which already gave me a savory taste of the speeds I could theoretically achieve.

  After enjoying myself for a few more minutes, I hesitantly moved on to the rest of my skills. Next on the list was [Inverted Sky], the apparent evolution of the very strange skill [Broken Sky].

  Activating the skill rather than fighting myself through a nondescript description, I landed back in the world of strings I was already intimately familiar with by now. Still, something was different now. While I previously had an invisible plane to walk through there, I was now simply floating there aimlessly. Every direction looked absolutely identical, and there was no gravity dictating any sense of up or down either.

  To combat this for now, I used [Sunfire] to create a three-dimensional construct with a spike pointing in every axis, oriented relative to the orientation I arrived at in this world. While I wasn't sure if all that even mattered or whether my starting orientation here was identical to my original orientation, it defined a set of relative directions I could navigate with inside of here.

  Canceling the skill instead of moving forward, I landed back in the cavern I just left seconds ago. That was unexpectedly weird, though. When doing the same previously, I'd always end up in random spots and not in the place where I left. The exception to that were rifts and anomalies, since they inevitably anchored the string world to the real world in the places they existed, but as far as I could tell just now, there weren't any rifts nearby. Could this be part of the almost fully unknown sub-effect of my halo? Or was this just part of the skill evolution to make my life easier?