Richter was able to grind his traps skill to 25, and a lot of that was slowed down because he was actually working on the subskill trap disarm. I see no reason why other chaos seeds couldnt be apprentice in 1-2 skills of they're working hard and focusing on just a few things. Especially if its a skill that's keeping them alive. He has said repeatedly that limitless is holding back skill progression by spreading his effort too thinly.
I agree, one or two focus skills at early apprentice would be belivable. Which is arguably all you really need to begin the journey to power. Chaos magic would be my choice if at all possible, i imagine all chaos seeds have pretty high affinity for it.
While limitless is arguably holding his progression back from his potential max, that max is a lot higher than for others. His massive stamina, health and mana bars combined with rapid recuperation means he can work a lot longer and a lot harder. Similarly his increased wisdom and intelligence probably have some effects.
I believe he only claimed something similar to that only once. Then there is the contradiction to what you recall: "FastLFast had affected him profoundly on a personal level. Coupled with his Limitless ability, he’d been able to skyrocket through skill ranks. His skills let him cast stronger spells, enchant more powerful weapons, and be more ferocious in battle. While abilities could be more powerful, skills were the lifeblood of The Land" bk8 "Even with his Limitless and Fast Learner abilities, it could take more than a week to advance a single percentage point once they advanced high enough." Bk8 "A 25% boost to skill leveling was a serious boon. Coupled with his Fast Learner ability, which gave a 30% increase to his skill leveling and his Limitless ability, it would be enough to skyrocket him even when his skills reached higher ranks and leveling became more difficult." Bk8
Why did he get that last one again? Im blanking on that for some reason. Nice quotes, but i know he has discussed the limitless is kind of a double edged sword. The first quote is talking about the variety of skills, including rare ones that he is able to call upon in a fight. It does give him a lot of power. The second quote is kind of saying that limitless alone, and even combined with his fast learner ability doesnt allow him to fly through the higher levels.. so there may be some diminishing return there, which is kind of in line with my point. The third quote is definitely refrencing the fact that his constant 100% affinity allows him to level each individual skill faster than anyone with a lower affinity. Which is absolutely true, if youre looking at a single skill. The other edge of the sword is the fact that it takes longer to raise 100 skills than it does to level 10. Even if Richter can raise each of his 100 skills twice as fast as the guy raising 10 without limitless, it still takes longer. That's all I was pointing out.
Its not a contradiction, Limitless is slowing down his progress. Not necesarily compared to other chaos seeds, but rather his own potential max skill gain into which goes all the factors. No matter how fast you are, dividing your efforts divides your gains.
Maybe slowing down total gains is not the right way of saying it. He is making gains in a lot of areas but it is slowing down getting any one skill due to divided attention. Still same number of X skill gain just divided over a larger number of skills. This will make his swordsmanship likely to be at a lower skill than a focused swordsman. But, he has many other skills he can use the even out the fight. This makes him relatively weaker in the short term, but like others have mentioned gives him a much higher cap in the long term. Getting his skills to a high level is only part of the problem though. As yoshi said when Richter asked why they were training with sword forms and not raising his skill level yoshi said it was much more important to learn how to handle the sword. A high skill leveled person who didn't train how to use a sword would be beaten by a trained low leveled swordsman. Even if Richter hit 100 skill level in everything it wouldn't mean he knows how to use it. I bet his magical skills for example are much lower than they should be because he was never formally trained. We haven't even seen him really use the mana manipulation that the HM gave him.
He didn't get that one, it was a possible bonus for choosing the Tier 2 Human Ascension path, there was also a less powerful version attached to the Tier 2 Telepath... path. It would likely let him power level a skill to ~15-20 within a day or two had he chosen it, as he can already reach 10 or so depending on the skill (omits magic and combat kinds of skills but only due to how they level)
