Having had his previously unknown fear of being unwillingly golden showered revealed, Alex spent the next few minutes trying to scrub the memory away. The bath bomb and hot spring function ran out after not too long, leaving him to exit the pool once more, this time a changed man. Drying off and dressing in his earth clothes, he pulled the comfortable chair from Greyson’s office out, before taking a seat. Immediately expanding Sixth Sense, he immersed himself in the skill trying to verify the safety of his surroundings.
The wind was cool, but comfortable against his skin, and having certified there was nothing odd in the area, he pulled out some food. Alex hadn’t noticed it while with Graham, but now that he had a break, he was absolutely ravenous. It only took fifteen minutes for him to put a troubling dent in his stockpiles, the action lowering his projected reserves by a large margin. He had zero experience being a forest to table hunter, but knew he’d need to figure it out before the expedition was forced to come to an early end.
The levels he’d gained thus far were nice, if not the way he’d gained them, but Alex was still far from where he needed to be. If he combined both the food he’d purchased and what he’d taken from his jailers, he had enough for about six solid meals. Full and seeing he still had a bit of time before he was starving, Alex put off the issue for tomorrow. It was time he got his fingers back.
Storing the chair and replacing it with Ocelot’s Mat, Alex took a cross-legged seat. The battle had left him with no few injuries and, even after taking the potions, he’d still had multiple lingering ones, besides his lack of fingers. It made a level of sense if the change was due to his race upgrade, but the hit to his healing practices was quite unfortunate. Making sure his position was comfortable, Alex tried to feel the effect the mat had on him. Neither his injuries nor pathways seemed different, but the description hadn’t specified he needed to do anything else.
Rather than drop straight into a full meditation, he pulled opened his notifications. The mat’s description only specified that he needed to remain physically still, mental movement shouldn’t be an issue.
***
You have defeated Kazolt (Level 43). Bonus experience awarded for killing an enemy above your level. Experience reduced due to partial contribution.
+3 Gold
For tracking, hunting, and killing an enhanced beast, reversing the roles of predator and prey, you have been awarded the achievement: Beast Hunter I
Your skill [Stealth] has advanced to Level Thirteen.
Your skill [Tracker] has advanced to Level Five.
Your skill [Advanced Analyze] has advanced to Level Sixteen.
Your skill [Dodge] has advanced to Level Eighteen.
Your skill [Sixth Sense] has advanced to Level Twenty-Four.
Your skill [Echo Relocation] has advanced to Level Three.
Your skill [Negotiate] has advanced to Level Two.
Your skill [Negotiate] has advanced to Level Three.
Your skill [Aura Control] has advanced to Level Twelve.
Your skill [Pain Resistance] has advanced to Level Twenty-Five.
Your skill [Pain Resistance (Uncommon)] has advanced to E-Grade. Pick one of the following upgrades:
Physical Resistance (Rare) - Gain resistance to all physical ailments including, Pain, Disease, and Poisons. Let your journey to power be free of physical limitations. Skill ability correlates to Willpower, Endurance, and Fortitude.
Nerve Null (Uncommon): For up to one hour a day, turn off sensations in specific parts, or the entirety of, your body. Skill will not prevent death, only your awareness of its ever-approaching presence. Skill ability correlates to Willpower and Endurance.
Iron Will (Uncommon): Pain is but a motivator the more injured you are, the more damage you do. Skill ability correlates to Willpower and Strength.
Sense Transference (Rare): Transform any accumulated sensation into a surge of focused energy you can direct at a single target. Skill ability correlates to Willpower and Wisdom.
***
The lack of a level was a bit disappointing, especially considering how rapidly he’d advanced during F-Grade, but any malcontent vanished as he reached the upgrade options for Pain Resistance. Reading over all the choices, Alex found it easy to narrow his it down to Physical Resistance and Sense Transference.
Nerve Null was cool in theory, but the idea of getting stabbed somewhere vital, and not taking a potion because he didn’t realize he’d been attacked, sounded like a stupid way to die. He also didn’t know where a skill like that would take him in the long run, since he’d be giving up Pair Resistance’s former full time passive effect, for a selectively useful timed skill. On his first read, Iron Will had caught his eyes, even with its lower rarity. He’d been getting significantly injured in almost every fight he’d been in, and a damage increase from those injuries could only be beneficial. The issue was, he wasn’t meant to be getting injured in the first place.
The majority of Alex’s skills were focused on burst damage and escape, a tried a true assassin build if he’d ever seen one. He might still have two classes to unlock before the system stole them, but nothing he sought to unlock would fit very well with the ability. Iron Will was best suited toward people who had higher Strength, Endurance, and skills that catered to that. His highest stat was currently still Dexterity, followed by Intelligenceand Wisdom, Strength wasn’t far behind, but it wasn’t even top three.
After another few minutes he discarded Sense Transference for similar reasons as he had Nerve Null. It was interesting for sure, especially since it wasn’t limited to pain but encompassed all types of stimuli. In the end, what solidified Physical Resistance as his choice was the fact that he had Fear Resistance. This new rare skill was essentially just a direct progression of Pain Resistance. Pain had to do with touch as a physical sensation, so it had granted a physical based skill. Using the same logic, it wasn’t too much of a leap to assume Fear Resistance might grant something similar in the domain of Mental Resistance. If they happened to have a good synergy, then boom, double upgrade for both.
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Knowing he was getting a bit ahead of himself, Alex made sure he’d be partial to the skill even if it didn’t follow his wild path of evolution. Realistically, however, it was the most beneficial choice at the moment, and he selected it as his option.
***
Skill Pain Resistance(Uncommon) successfully upgraded to: Physical Resistance (Rare)
Grade: E
Level: 25
Description: It is said that the ability to sense is what makes a person conscious. Negative sensations disrupt this experience. Remove them by enhancing your body’s ability to withstand any condition through pure, undeniable, might. Gain resistance to all physical ailments including, Pain, Disease, and Poisons. Let your journey to power be free of physical limitations. Skill ability correlates to Willpower, Endurance, and Fortitude.
***
Content with this choice, Alex flipped his thoughts back to the future. The way skills upgraded had his mind racing beyond just skill evolutions, but in the ways that he could dictate his build from here. Ever since arriving drunk in that alley, it had pretty much been nonstop racing, but for the first time he’d managed to get a little leeway. He wasn’t strong, but had the ability to protect himself. He wasn’t safe, but had some security. Alex living beyond this tutorial had rebounded from absolutely impossible to extremely unlikely. If he didn’t take this chance to figure out what he wanted to be in that potential future, when could he?
Of course, the moment he wanted to put some of that pen and paper he’d taken from the office to good use, he couldn’t move… nor had his writhing hand at all. Checking on the limb, he couldn’t tell if there’d been a quantitative change, and reasoned he’d be there for a while. Activating Sixth Sense and Aura Control, he dropped into a deep meditation, if he couldn’t plan, he could at least train.
Exiting the trance when he noticed his hand was entirely healed, nearly two hours later, Alex let out a relieved sigh. The fingers felt a bit stiff, but there was no loss of sensation or otherwise recognizable impairment. He’d essentially been throwing every point of Willpower he’d had into not freaking out, and trusting in his item, but not much had been working out in his favor lately. Now that he was fully healed, he kind of wished he’d let himself panic, since doing so might have granted him another level in Fear Resistance.
The skill had plateaued about halfway through his prison sentence, and getting it to twenty-five would let him test his theory. That made him remember one of his still unused rewards, the plus five to the level of any skill, and Alex debated whether now was the time. A cramp in his hand pulled him back to reality, and he decided to deal with that after he made sure his hand was definitely back in top condition.
While Alex had been a bit doubtful of Graham’s claims, just as the old wolf suggested nothing had entered his sphere's range while he’d meditated. He still wasn’t willing to bet his life on it, but he felt it led a bit more validity to the man’s claims, including the reason he’d… violated him. Shuddering at the memory, he rose to his feet and pulled out a dagger, the normal one from the arena. The weapon felt stiff around his closed fist as he made his way to the training grounds, and Alex began flexing and retracting the digits until he felt something off. Not about his hand, but rather the way he walked.
Caught off guard, he parsed that the insistence wanted him to shift his posture slightly. It was a bit odd because he felt like he was walking how he always did, but after doing so he could tell it had helped. Getting used to moving this way would be odd, but this stance closed a few openings, leaving his body ready to strike or defend at any moment. He heard another couple hints about how he held the weapon and the distance between footfalls, and as he arrived in front of the dummy, Alex felt like just those few suggestions had enhanced his fighting capabilities.
Readying to strike his target, he felt another cry that he was doing something incorrect, multiple somethings. His transition was all wrong, as was his stance, foot placement, grip, the angle of his chest, Bladed Weapons Mastery was seemingly screaming his incompetence in the weapons of its namesake. It wasn’t exactly wrong; he’d mainly used his weapons to stab wildly once in range. There was little room for technique when he was one mistake from death.
Alex had known mastery skills offered advice, but it seemed the ability’s real purpose was for use in non-hostile environments. He couldn’t believe this was his first time pulling out the weapon without the need to immediately use it, but as he thought back, it seemed true enough. If he could train under the skill’s guidance in his downtime, that was something else entirely. Putting a pin in that for the moment, he stored the dagger and pulled out his hammer as to not get distracted by his shortcomings.
After feeling like everything was back in working order, Alex gave the dummy a few punches, before dropping to do some burpees. His impromptu exercise turned into a half hour session as Alex got lost testing the limits of his new body, limits he could no longer reach. Going from being a moderately impressive skater to being able to do multiple single-handed handstand push-ups on his fingertips was quite a leap, but he wasn’t complaining. Checking the timer, Alex saw he still had a few hours of daylight left, so pulling out a few things from his inventory, he began writing out something of a plan for the future.
The whole thing ended up taking over two hours and quarter-pound of paper, but by the end Alex felt he had a solid plan. Rather than recklessly running around killing anything he saw for the next three week’s, he’d focus this first week in and around the hideout. It was potentially risky, and he’d adapt the plan when necessary, but he doubted he’d run out of things to kill. This would give him time to train his skills closest to E-Grade like: Sixth Sense, level twenty-four, and Meditation, level twenty-three. As well as work on unlocking, and advancing more mastery skills.
This also stopped him from needing to rush back to the city gates in six days when he was presumably offered another mandatory quest to fight the beast hoard. If that pattern held, he’d be free to explore the forest uninhibited until the day before his return date, which worked out. Even if that wasn’t the case, fighting against the hoard and receiving the rewards was key to the next part of his plan, copying Janet’s class.
It was between her, Ralph, and Dora for the most powerful people he could get close to, but Theodora was out since her class almost certainly had something to do with eyes he didn’t have. Alex didn’t know what Ralph’s combat class looked like, but after a torturous four years pursuing an understanding in the physical, he knew his limits. As useful as alchemy proved to be, a future as a chemist was not in the cards for him. If he learned of another class he wanted along the way, he might also attempt to take it, since he should be able to get two class scrolls over the next three weeks, but for the moment his was the overarching plan.
Within those few weeks, he also wanted to work on improving and rounding out his kit. Skill evolutions were part of it, but working off how he’d been forced to fight it wasn’t enough. The majority of his combat-related skills were either a gap-closer, melee damage, or a disengage. He could focus on raising his mana so an escape or entry skill was always available, but Alex also wanted to get a couple ranged skills as a buffer. It would also be ideal if he could gain an area of effect skill or something similar so he wasn’t stuck taking fights one at a time like he’d been with the faun earlier.
Truthfully, he wanted magic, even more so after unlocking Echo Relocation, but he wouldn’t tunnel vision on it. That did remind Alex he needed to try for more Achievement Unlock Tokens on top of the Item Upgrade Sigils, so he added it to the list in big writing. For those he’d need quests, so accepting any that came his way would be paramount. Besides that he would also need to try to get some armor or the like, Graham hadn’t had any on hand, but claimed different sections of the forest were littered with the stuff due to dead adventures. The only issue was the things that killed them tended to stick around.
Storing his unbound sheets of paper Alex pulled out some food as he watched the sunset below the tree line. It wouldn’t be easy, but it might be doable.