The Lupine System-Chapter 138: Use Cases
Use Cases
Time passed with Mike continuing his less-than-ethical experiments on his body. Inflicting different injuries and watching how they healed while he controlled his Vitality in different ways. Granted, he didn’t go overboard with the injuries, both because doing so wasn’t necessary at the moment, and while he had an extremely high pain tolerance, he did still feel pain, and hurting himself over and over wasn’t fun.
He was so engrossed in what he was doing that he didn’t notice time flying, and he was only snapped out of his stupor once when the rest of the wolves returned to the cave after a successful hunt.
Mike didn’t try to create a new skill. Not yet, anyway. He focused solely on familiarizing himself with the effects of the ability and observing just how deep its reach went, and if he was being honest, despite spending hours on it, he felt like he’d barely scratched the surface.
It couldn’t be helped. Even people with lower-ranking abilities took years, maybe more, to familiarize themselves with their abilities and experiment with them.
So, it wasn’t surprising that Mike hadn’t made a large amount of progress when he pretty much just began to look into Vitalis Core after spending all his time on Primal Dominion.
However, while there were still many things to uncover about the skill, it didn’t mean that Mike hadn’t made any progress. He was efficient like that.
Of the discoveries he made, the ones he paid attention to and liked the most had to be three.
The first was something he called ’Wound Prioritization.’. We already established that Vitality is omnipresent within the body and automatically moves towards a damaged area to promote healing and regeneration.
The thing about this, is that this happens equally, which might not sound bad, until you remember that not all wounds are equal, and it would be preferable to have some heal before others. But most people couldn’t control that...
Unless they were Mike, of course.
Mike now knew how to prioritize wounds and have his Vitality move towards more lethal or mundane injuries to heal them faster than the other wounds, making him more efficient in a fight.
This was huge, since that meant that, for starters, he could be much more efficient in managing his Vitality and energy in a fight.
One has to remember that Mike does not have unlimited energy or Vitality. So if he enters a fight where he’s taking lots of damage constantly, he’d be expending a lot of both trying to heal every wound he acquires. So being able to prioritize what wounds should be healed would make him far more efficient in that regard.
Another use case he thought of was if he fought an opponent with a lot of insight. Say, for instance, they noticed that Mike could heal quickly, but also read just how fast he could heal. So they sever a limb and try to take advantage of the opening with a preset belief that they could capitalize before Mike fully regenerates, only for Mike to heal the limb faster than they anticipated and catch them off guard.
...
It was a very specific scenario, but Mike felt like it would come into play a lot in the future.
Anyway, the second discovery that he made was something he thought was also very useful, and that was placing Vitality in certain spots beforehand. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎
Places Mike believed would take damage ahead of time would be flushed with his Vitality, so if they ended up taking damage, they would heal almost immediately. This was a bit harder to estimate since one couldn’t guarantee where they would get hit unless they just stood still, and you were constantly moving in a fight, but Mike could make educated guesses, not to mention that his instincts always warned him where he would get hit if he didn’t block or dodge. So it was an extremely useful skill if used properly.
He even speculated that he could do the same thing for his heart, but he had no plans to test that theory out.
The third use case played into the previous two a little bit, and from a strength perspective, was probably his favorite.
Mike was a close-range and physical fighter, and he had numerous skills to amp his stats in relation to this fact.
Crimson Ladder, Aura at maximum output, Overclocking, Hunter’s Resurgence. All of these skills made him a terrifying opponent in close range due to just how absurd his stats became while all of them were in use.
However, these skills also came with immense strain, especially when Mike used them all in conjunction. His physique could handle it due to him being a Lupine, but it wasn’t sustainable, and with how he was moving, he would only make these skills more potent in the future.
So, here’s where his Vitality came in.
Unlike conventional injuries which happen in an instant, the deterioration caused by these boosting skills was more gradual. Faster than the strain from exercise, but slower than being stabbed.
So, by manipulating his Vitality, Mike could sort of undo the deterioration as it was occurring, saving him from the backlash of using his boosting skills for long durations, and, in theory, he could maintain them for an indefinite period as long as he had the Vitality to heal the damage and the energy to use the skills.
However, this third discovery was the most theoretical of the three because, well...
Doing it wasn’t easy to pull off.
It’s a lot simpler to assign Vitality to one or two wounds than to damage occurring to one’s entire body at once.
But one might say: "If Vitality is spread equally around the body, and the deterioration from the boosting skills also affects the body equally, wouldn’t it simply be a case of playing into that phenomenon?"
Well, yes. But also no.
Yes, Vitality is spread equally throughout the body and will attend to injuries equally even if the injuries aren’t equal.
However, Vitality did not operate with intent.
Its a reactive force. Not proactive.
Vitality exists to preserve life, not enhance performance. It responds decisively to wounds, physical trauma, and damage that threatens the integrity of the body. But the deterioration caused by boosting skills wasn’t exactly registered as an emergency.
Not immediately, that is.
The strain from Crimson Ladder, Overclocking, and the rest, accumulated in layers.
Micro-fractures in muscle fibers. Overstimulated nerves. Cells forced past optimal output but not yet broken. From the body’s perspective, it was discomfort, not danger.
As such, Vitality tended to... ’Hesitate’, in that scenario.
It moved evenly, repaired evenly, and waited for something to FAIL before moving to repair it...
Which was the problem
To sustain boosting skills indefinitely, Mike couldn’t rely on Vitality’s natural behavior. He’d need to consciously control it to recognize the controlled self-destruction as damage worth preventing. Which is how it played into the previous two points of prioritizing what to heal and also assigning Vitality ahead of time.
... The issue was, that it required precision on a level that Mike did not yet possess.
One must remember. Even with Mike’s absurd perception, whenever he turned his attention inward, he couldn’t focus on every individual part of his body simultaneously. He could only focus on a few things at a time.
It’s why Mike couldn’t focus on every single Energy Pathway at the same time, or every single vein, or nerve. He could do it in bits, but at the same time was beyond his current capacity.
Even his ability to read an enemy’s internals to know what move they would make next followed this rule. He couldn’t focus on the entire nervous system of an opponent while focusing on their entire muscular system simultaneously.
So, to summarize, while the last use case was possible in theory, it was outside of Mike’s current capabilities and would remain so until he either raised his perception high enough, or was put in a situation where he had no choice but to force it to happen.
It was a bit saddening, but if Mike was being honest, he wasn’t really disappointed. In fact, he wasn’t even surprised.
Its hard to stress just how unusual it is for someone to have multiple abilities. Because every ability is unique and has so many different avenues they could be developed in.
What Mike was imagining was the equivalent of him using his aura to affect the world around him, like with Primal Authority. He simply hadn’t reached that level of mastery with the ability compared to his Aura. That’s why he wasn’t too disheartened.
He simply hadn’t used it more and hadn’t gotten familiar with it. With enough time, his proficiency would increase, and he would use the ability in more complex ways. That’s just how things worked, talent or not.
When he finally ended the whole session, he couldn’t help but feel drained, but not in the normal way.
’Being low on Vitality is a lot weirder than being low on energy.’ He thought and stretched. It wasn’t the same as simply being physically tired, it went deeper than that. But it wasn’t painful either.
’Hm, actually, if I deplete a lot of my Vitality before the full moon, maybe I’ll be easier to deal with.’ Mike mused. If that was the case, then perhaps he could plan for that beyond just hoping Theresa and Kris could keep him down for the whole night.
