《The Memoirs of Tiapa Kynos》 The beginning Hello, my name is Tiapa Kynos and my story starts in hell. Let me explain. Every child in our world, when they turn 14, is given a [Starting Job] by Destiny. Each [Starting Job] comes with 2 skills, selected from the beginner''s list at random. Most of the Jobs given out are common - Innkeeper, Fisher, Baker, etc. These guide young souls down paths that Destiny provides for them. However, higher rarity classes can be given out at 14, depending on the child. For example, uncommon classes can be Squire, Student, etc. For a few incredibly lucky individuals, truly rare classes are granted: Tamer, Psychopomp, etc. These [Starting Jobs] aren¡¯t Destiny¡¯s final word, however. Instead, at level 10 you are given the option to [Change Jobs] by visiting certain sacred sites. These sites then give you a choice - [Change Job] or [Accept Job]. At this point you can choose from a list of [Jobs] you qualify for. Otherwise, if you¡¯ve found your true calling, you can choose to accept your current [Job], which freezes the [Job] so that you can¡¯t abandon it or advance it to a higher tier [Job], but opens up the highest levels of advancement. For example, if you become a [Mage] and decide that, instead of specializing in a specific school of magic you want to be a generalist forever, you can [Accept Job], which will allow you to access skills that are only available to the highest tiers of the [Mage], such as [Purify Mana]. At level 20, as long as you haven¡¯t chosen [Accept Job], you can also choose to attempt to advance your [Job] to a [Second Tier Job], such as Mage, Knight, Scribe, etc. Doing so risks losing your current skills, however, and once you choose to advance, there¡¯s no going back. You take the trial and you accept what you get. I, however, got royally screwed. Rather than get a common job, or an uncommon job, or a rare job, I got a secondary job. While Destiny doesn¡¯t officially designate them as such, these [Jobs] are typically considered useless and are only taken to support the functions of the primary [Job]. As an example, a person shouldn¡¯t take [Trainer] as a primary [Job]. Instead, they take [Soldier] as a primary and then, later, deliberately seek out [Trainer] as a second [Job]. Except for me. Apparently, Destiny hates me. I got [Trainer] when I turned 14.
[Trainer] Job: Trainer. Trainers pass their skills and experience to the next generation. Maximum Number of Skills: 40.
But it gets worse. When I was given [Trainer], I got my standard two random beginner [Skills] to help me along. It should be noted that, to advance one¡¯s [Job], one must either advance these two [Skills], gain others related to their [Job] and advance those, or, most likely, both. I never got that chance. I was given [Grant Skill] as my first beginner skill.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
[Grant Skill] Sacrifice [Skill Levels] in a chosen skill to grant [Skill Levels] in that skill to another individual. The higher your [Skill level] compared to your target, the higher chance of success. The more [Skill Levels] sacrificed, the higher chance of success and the more potential skill levels gained by the target. Note: Grant Skill cannot drop the user¡¯s [Skill Level] below 1. Warning: [Skill Levels] are sacrificed regardless of the success of [Grant Skill]. Requirements: Trainer job. Cost: Skill levels, variable. Advancement: Increased [Skill Levels] increases the success rate of this skill. Increased [Trainer] levels increases the likelihood of the target gaining more than one [Skill Level].
Obviously, this skill is practically useless. How am I supposed to gain levels in my [Job] if I keep giving away my skill points?! It¡¯s useless, right? Wrong. It¡¯s just useless to me. There was no chance to hide it. The Baron¡¯s law says everyone must report their [Starting Job] and [Skills] within 5 days of turning 14. Worse, it was paired with probably the most useful [Trainer] skill.
[Manifest Skill] Through studied focus, you are granted a chance to gain a [Skill Level] in any skill that is demonstrated for you. The larger the difference between your [Skill Level] and the [Skill Level] of the demonstrator, the larger the chance that you will manifest that [Skill]. Requirements: Trainer job. Cost: Passive, none. Advancement: Increased [Skill Levels] increases the chance of gaining a [Skill Level]. Increased [Trainer] levels increases the chance of gaining new [Skills].
[Manifest Skill] just sealed my fate. I followed the law, registered my [Skills], and was taken as a slave two weeks later. They killed my family to keep them from complaining. All because I could help the rich and powerful advance their [Skills] with little or no effort on their part. I spent the next 13 years of my life being sold to the highest bidder. I spent almost 2 years learning Alchemy with [Manifest Skill] every day only to grant it back to the [Alchemist] I was observing. He gained a whooping 40-odd skill points that way. It doesn¡¯t sound like much, but when you¡¯re above 200, every new [Skill Level] is precious beyond measure. I gained not one skill point. Not a single one. Every time I gained level 8 I was forced to use [Grant Skill] to sacrifice all of my levels, including [Grant Skill] and [Manifest Skill]. This way, I could never advance past level 1 [Trainer], could never be free to [Change Job]. I was a captive of my own abilities. In the beginning I tried to resist, but pain has a way of breaking down any soul. Eventually I learned it was better to just comply. So I found more passive ways to resist. I worked on freeing myself not today, but sometime in the future. I didn¡¯t resist, but the abuse didn¡¯t stop. They just found other reasons to abuse me. The brothels were the worst. Did you know there are skills called [Copulation], [Fellatio], [Pleasure Touch], and many, many others? A full 8 of my 40 skills slots, I learned from whores so I could teach whores. I vowed when they sold me on, soiled in body and soul, that I would keep those skills until I was so strong they could never take me back. Eventually, I got my chance. Escape [Assessors] are a [Job] of pure, undiluted evil. Their most notable [Skill], [Assess Person], when raised to high enough levels, allows them to see everything about you. Your [Name], [Age], [Attributes], [Jobs], [Skills], [Titles], [Traits], everything. An [Assessor] hired by the brothels once told me how many men had used me. I wanted flay him alive and sew his skin back on inside-out. I was under constant scrutiny. My owners always kept close track of what [Skills] I knew and what their levels were. I think I was assessed more than any other person ever born. It¡¯s a horrible sensation, being assessed. You can feel it if you¡¯re paying attention. Most people don¡¯t. It¡¯s common practice for [Assessors] to level by using [Assess Person] on random people in the street. I always feel it. It¡¯s like having someone pawing at you everywhere all at once, like being forced to lie there while a man runs his hands over your soul. I think I preferred spending time in the brothels to being assessed. At least there I only had to watch. It was eight months into my enslavement when I learned that [Assess Person] can be resisted. I was enduring another in an endless string of assessments when I got the notification. [Assess Person resisted!] [Your Willpower has increased by 1!] That night I received the worst beating of my life. The slaver beat me until I couldn¡¯t resist. Then he beat me for wasting his time. Then he beat me for making the [Assessor] wait. I think he abused me from dusk until noon the next day, impressing upon me my error. That night I gained a second point in willpower. I can only assume it was for surviving. It wasn¡¯t until after he sold me off that I tried again. My next owner wasn¡¯t inventive, just brutal. He¡¯d just whip me, over and over, without variation. My back started to go numb, the whip barely leaving an impression until the flesh was broken. I wasn¡¯t deterred. As soon as I saw that first resist message a thought took root in my mind, one that wouldn¡¯t leave me be. The problem was that I couldn¡¯t hope to gain anything by simply protecting myself from being assessed. That wouldn¡¯t work; they would just keep abusing me until I didn¡¯t resist. No, I had to believe I could partially resist and do it in such a way I wouldn¡¯t get caught doing it. I had to learn to hide a [Skill]. From then on, every time I was assessed, I focused on a single [Skill], any [Skill], and imagined hiding just that [Skill] from the assessors. I lost count of the beatings as I resisted more and more often. I gained so many scars that whole areas of my body became numb. My back, my hands, my feet, my breasts - they all felt distant, layered in thick cotton. The madam of my final brothel mutilated my face and breasts with a knife before she sold me on as too ugly to keep. By then I thought it a fair trade if it meant leaving the brothels. I¡¯d left bits of flesh in plenty of other places. This one was no different. It took seven years. Seven years before I succeeded the first time. [Assess Person partially resisted!] [Your Willpower has increased by 1!] I sobbed when I saw the message. Sobbed for a dying hope, sobbed for proof that escape was possible. When the [Assessor] documented my [Skills] that night, he only documented 39. One success wasn¡¯t enough. I had to manage it every time. Once I started if I slipped I might give away the game. It took another two years of practice before I could consistently hide a single [Skill], regardless of the [Assessor]. I remember it well. My Willpower was 34. I¡¯ve often been asked how I managed to break through the ¡®wall¡¯ at 30. Well, here it is - set your whole mind on something, then keep it there no matter what you¡¯re doing. Build a wall of resolve that lasts through torture and rape; fixate on it until a part of your mind does nothing else. When your mind wanders, get punished. Every time the wall cracks, endure pain. Then keep going, keep rebuilding that wall, keep shoring up those cracks. Every fucking time. Thousands upon thousands of times.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Oh, I failed. I failed often. In my 10th year I started leveling a [Skill] that I thought would see me free me when I was assessed in my sleep. I rate that as the second worst beating of my life. After they finished, they had to wait three days for me to be coherent. Then they offered me a choice - lose the [Skill] or die. They made sure too. They had me learn a new [Skill] to overwrite it and assessed me to make sure I possessed exactly 40. That¡¯s how I lost [One with Shadows]. From then on I was never completely asleep, part of my mind always on keeping a [Skill] hidden. I never passed out, no matter how they beat me after that night. No matter how badly they ran me down, exhausted, starved, or abused me, part of me was always awake, a little part of me was always manning that wall. My second chance came when I was 25. I almost missed it. They had me watching fights in the arena, picking out the unique [Skills] of the fighters. It wasn¡¯t particularly interesting, but I needed to focus to pick anything out. I was so zoned into the fight inside the arena that I didn¡¯t notice when a woman stepped out of thin air in the box across from me. It wasn¡¯t until the sunlight framed her standing behind the Duke that I paid attention. I focused on her, sensing an opportunity. The woman carried nothing on her, had no weapons, no armor, nothing. Instead she pointed her fingers at the back of the Duke¡¯s head and struck, lightning fast. There was no blood, visible trauma, nothing to show she had attacked him. But I could tell, without a single doubt, that the Duke was dead. The woman never looked at me. Never knew I saw. Even if she did, I doubted she would have cared. I certainly didn¡¯t. Me, I focused, all of my will on trying to pick out what [Skills] she was using. Whatever she did to kill the Duke, I never found out, and certainly never had the chance to pick up with [Manifest Skill]. It didn¡¯t matter. The [Skill] she used next was far, far better. Better than anything I could hope for. [Discorporate].
Congratulations! You may learn a new skill! [Discorporate] Through your will alone you release the bonds your body has to the material world, allowing it to pass through any object, no matter how solid. To maintain this state, your will must be focused. Any lapse in concentration will cause the skill to fail. Warning: It is not possible to carry objects in this state! USE EXTREME CAUTION: It is possible to leave this state while the body is passing through a physical object. Doing so will cause the object to fuse with your body, with catastrophic results. Requirements: Willpower 25. Other requirements overwritten. Cost: Hidden. Advancement: Increased [Skill Levels] improve proficiency with multiple aspects of this skill. You already have 40 skills. To learn this skill you must unlearn another. Do you want to remove a skill? [Y/N]
I nearly screamed with joy when I saw the description. I accepted, abandoning [Swift Swordplay], and learning [Discorporate]. I held myself calm and still, comforting myself by doing the mental exercises that hid my [Skills]. If the guards were paying attention, they might have seen me twitch. I waited hours, watching the fights, learning what [Skills] I thought my owner would like, pretending I wasn¡¯t jumping up and down inside. Then, when I had a good selection of unique and rare one, I left to practice them. That night, when my guards were more interested in trying to stay awake than in watching me, I took off my clothes, set them aside, and curled up in the corner. I activated [Discorporate]. It fought me. I was doing something that the world was trying to tell me was wrong. With only a single [Skill Level] my body made it crystal clear that I was using my mind to tear it into tiny shreds. I flailed. I floundered. I failed. Every moment of next two years was spent doing one of three things - appeasing my owners, hiding my new [Skill], or practicing it. It took me two years of practicing whenever I could be sure I was alone to figure out how to use the [Skill]. I had to manage intense feelings of wrongness, pain, and panic. During that time, I gathered the willpower to try escaping, for good and real. Once I¡¯d tried escaping from every new owner at least once, but the beatings hadn¡¯t been worth it. It took thirteen years. By the end I was so scarred that my owners insisted I wear a mask at all times. I was whipped so many times that I couldn¡¯t feel anything on my back or butt unless you cut. I was raped so many times that I long since lost any notion that sex was an act of intimacy or pleasure. It was just one more torture. By the end I was so disfigured that they wouldn¡¯t even do that anymore. Shelter That night, after spending 13 years, 9 months, and 22 days as a slave, I escaped. I shed my clothes, crouched with my back to the door, and sprinted towards the exterior wall. Two steps from it I jumped and used [Discorporate]. For the first time in 5 years my mind abandoned the wall, free from protecting itself from [Assessors]. It no longer mattered. Instead, it frantically computed vectors and distances, laser focused on the twin goals of holding myself in [Discorporate] and timing my exit. There wasn¡¯t room for anything else. When trying [Discorporate] for the first time, I realized it had two giant, dangerous drawbacks. First, once I [Discorporated] I had no eyes, ears, no senses of any kind. I was completely blind. I could sense if I passed through something, if only vaguely, but no more. Second, whatever direction I was moving when I activated [Discorporate], and at whatever speed I was moving, that was it. I couldn¡¯t change. I had no muscles, nothing to push off of, no ability to slow down or change directions. Wherever I was going that¡¯s the way I would keep going until I ended [Discorporate]. It was a blind leap. My journey started in the cells under the arena, so I jumped to make sure I would reach the street. As I floated upwards and away, I tracked matter within my body, passing through me. There were brief flashes of emptiness but I waited, mind focused to a pinpoint, as I passed them. Finally, my body passed of out matter and into open space. Quickly I deactivated [Discorporate]. I fell five feet as gravity took hold once again. I braced for it and managed to avoid injury. Two night watchmen walking down the street saw me and shouted. Bad luck, I grumbled. I oriented myself, trying to ignore them as they ran towards me now, and gave myself a gentle push, narrowing my focus again. I activated [Discorporate]. The panic had long since left, the pain long since ceased to matter, but the disorientation would always be there. I felt my mind tiring, my will draining as I maintained the intense focus required. The first building passed and I guessed when I entered the street. Releasing my focus I fell, choking back bile.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. I might hold [Discorporate] for 3 seconds, total, for the rest of the night. Might. I needed to either find a place to hole up or run. Only I couldn¡¯t run. My body had been broken and battered too often for me to believe I could outrun professional guards. On the other hand, hiding with [Discorporate] was easy. Just find an unused space and [Discorporate]. Simple. The guards were shouting on the street I¡¯d left behind, so I didn¡¯t dawdle. I ran, bare feet slapping on cobbles, eyeing one building after another. Finding a suitable building turned out to be harder than I¡¯d thought. Eventually I came to a group of warehouses and decided I¡¯d not find better. The better guarded warehouses likely wouldn¡¯t let the watch in to search for a random woman, so I picked one of those. I ducked between two buildings before the guards got more than a passing glance, then turned towards the warehouse and sprinted, activating [Discorporate] at the last moment. I held it until I passed into the warehouse. Barely. I left go and collapsed, ignoring the massive piles of stock that surrounded me. In truth, I didn¡¯t care what the warehouse contained. Given how I got here and how I would probably have to leave, greed was pointless. I just needed a place to hide. After a good minute of sitting on the floor panting from exertion, I picked myself up and began exploring. It didn¡¯t take over-long to find a corner that looked abandoned, dust accumulated thick enough that I worried over being found. I pushed away the worry, knowing it was pointless, and began worming my way in among the stacked crates. I had just enough muscle, at 14 strength, to shift the stacks a little. Afterforcing myselfbetween them, I slid back the ones I¡¯d moved, covering my hiding place. It wasn¡¯t wide, maybe a foot, but I managed to lay on my side and stretch out. Believing I had done everything possible at the moment, I stretched out and slept.