[Traitial Art: Trait Manifestation — Learned]
[Value: Master] [MAX]
[Description: A supre optimization of personal trait that pushes structural capabilities to their absolute limit. Unlocks the latent potential within the user’s class blueprint, effectively increasing a class holder’s power by 50% at Master value. This manifestation bridges the gap between raw energy and physical reality, ensuring that every ability, skill, and attribute under the user’s current class operates at peak, devastating efficiency.]
Winston had co back cleanly this ti and one soul slot was used as expected with the experience pulling from deeper in the Blood Emperor’s reserves than the first attempt had required.
It was harder to reach this ti, regardless it was worth it. He had noticed the increased difficulty though.
The experiences weren’t sitting at the sa accessible depth anymore.
’Next attempt might need two slots just to get anything useful. If I’m lucky.’
He filed that concern away and turned to Zelda and Freya.
He explained Trait Manifestation in full — what it did and how it worked.
Zelda’s eyes went wide almost imdiately.
"A fifty percent increase? That’s not broken at all, that’s extrely broken."
Freya stayed quiet.
Fifty percent was impressive in isolation. However against Winston’s two-hundred-and-fifty percent boost from Soul Burn, it sat in a different category, but for anyone else, it was a significant jump.
So she was already thinking about its applications.
’At this point I’m collecting buffs,’ Winston thought. He wasn’t bothered by it though.
Every percentage point mattered during this window before the Crucible, when his rank was locked and raw progression wasn’t an option.
Buffs that let him fight above his ceiling were exactly what this period called for.
Zelda’s excitent was already visible and building.
Winston put a hand up before it went further.
"Trait Manifestation caps at Master value. That fifty percent is the ceiling. You don’t start there." He walked through the progression. "Entry value gives ten percent. Interdiate gives twenty. High gives thirty. Peak gives forty. Master gives fifty. You climb through all of them."
The excitent in Zelda’s face stayed, which told him she had already reached the sa conclusion he expected.
"You heard what I said right?" Winston confird. "You will be starting from the bottom."
"Yes," Zelda said. "But I don’t think you’d teach us sothing impossible to develop in under a week. That’s not the point of this."
Freya’s eyebrows rose slightly. She turned to Zelda. She had assud Winston would teach them the art — that part made sense.
But learning it to a useful value inside a week hadn’t been a possibility she’d considered.
But now that she thought about it, Winston had said he was doing this to help them for the Crucible.
She looked back at Winston and waited.
’There goes the surprise.’ Winston kept that thought entirely to himself.
"Yes," he said. "I can guide the energy flow within you to stimulate the art’s activation directly." He paused. "The best I can do is bring you both to Interdiate value. Everything above that you’d have to reach on your own."
The excitent on Zelda’s face evaporated. Freya looked at Winston with an expression that suggested she was reassessing everything she thought she understood about how Traitial Arts worked.
"Wait." Freya’s voice was asured but the disbelief was clear. "You can transfer the art to us directly. And it will already be at Interdiate value."
Winston nodded.
The reason he could do this traced back to the chanics of creating a Traitial Art. When a holder originated a technique — built it from the ground up through their own trait understanding — one of the inherent conditions of that creation was the ability to transfer it directly to others.
A creator’s right, built into the art itself.
’I didn’t create it. The Blood Emperor did. But after absorbing its experience, that creator’s condition transferred to along with everything else.’
Freya’s thoughts were moving in a different direction. She was watching Winston with the quiet focus of soone putting pieces together without asking directly.
He could transfer an art to them at Interdiate value, that implied a specific relationship between Winston and the technique that went beyond simply having learned it.
She had been curious about his Trait Concealnt value the last ti it ca up, and he had redirected the conversation smoothly.
’Both his arts are probably at maximum value. I’m almost certain of it.’
She kept that conclusion to herself. Asking directly would just produce another redirect, and she had enough information already.
Zelda, predictably, had moved straight past the analysis.
"So how do we learn it?"
Winston glanced at the disturbance in Freya’s soul briefly and decided to leave it alone. He turned to Zelda.
"Start by going on your knees."
❖❖❖❖
Zelda and Freya were both on their knees, tops removed, back exposed. Winston stood behind them and kept his focus exactly where it needed to be — on the process, not on anything else.
They had trusted him with sothing they didn’t fully understand yet, and that trust didn’t leave room for mistakes.
To his knowledge, this was the first ti a Traitial Art had ever been transferred directly between class holders outside of a secret realm.
Every recorded art in human history had been obtained through secret realm trials. No holder had ever created one — or at least none that Winston, Freya, or Zelda knew of.
The Blood Emperor had, and through its experience, that creative right had passed to Winston.
’This is genuinely historic.’ The thought arrived before he could stop it, and he said it out loud without aning to.
Zelda and Freya both heard it. Neither comnted.
"I’m starting now," Winston said.
They both gave a small nod.
He placed his palms flat against their backs simultaneously.
The warmth was imdiate — his energy gathering at the contact points, building pressure before it had anywhere to flow.
Using energy to engrave a Traitial Art was unusual in concept. Energy existed to cast spells.
It wasn’t supposed to be the delivery chanism for sothing that lived in the trait itself.
But the principle held — energy could shortcut the learning process, carving pathways that would otherwise take weeks of practice to establish naturally.
The flow began.
Both girls tensed at once. Their teeth pressed together as the energy moved through them along specific internal routes, stimulating the activation pathways that Trait Manifestation required.
A Traitial Art wasn’t like a spell, it didn’t consu energy when active. It was structural. Part of the holder. Like learning to flex a muscle that had always existed but never been used before.
"Don’t fight the path," Winston said steadily. "Follow where the energy is going."
Both of them pulled their focus inward and stopped resisting.
Small sounds escaped from both of them despite the effort to hold still.
Then sothing clicked and the energy settled into place.
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