Standing up I stretched. I looked at the clock I keep on the wall of my living room and saw it was half past twelve. I had been sitting there for the better part of an hour. It was time for lunch. I looked back at the couch and did not find Sarah there. Mentally shrugging I went into the kitchen looking around. I did not find her there either. Assuming she is in the bath room I got to work making BLTs for us. I got the bread lecture and tomatoes out. I grabbed some bacon out of the fridge and put a pan on the stove. By some miracle the gas on my stove was working. I had not even thought about that until I turned on the stove but there was a better than zero chance our new neighbor the dungeon took out the gas line. Lucky for me it did not. If the line broke and I did not realize it, that could have been very bad. I may be an immortal vampire but even I would not come out unscathed in the middle of a gas explosion let alone Sarah.
Whether it was the smell or the sound of the bacon cooking Sarah found her way to the kitchen.
“What are you making Vi?” Sarah asked
“Lunch, BLTs okay with you?” I said with a smile. She nodded and pulled a knife out of the knife block, grabbed a cutting board and started cutting the tomato and pulled pieces of leaves off the head.
“Do you have mayo?” Sarach asked.
“Yeah bottom shelf on the door.”
“Got it thanks, oh do you want mayo on yours? I know you’re sometimes picky about mayo.” Sarah said
“Yeah sure just keep it on the light side please.”
“Got it.”
After I was done we put the sandwiches together and moved back to the living rooms after grabbing another drink to go with lunch. I got another Sprite while Sarah grabbed her second long board of the day.
While we were eating Sarah asked about my skills.
“So have you finished going over all your skills? By how long you were taking I assumed that you had quite the list.”
“Yeah I did. It was a very long list, 105 long. I did not look at every skill. All the basic moderate or intermediate skills that did not peak my interest I skipped.” i replied
“105! That's insane. I only had 30 and I only had three intermediate skills offered.” Sarah said.
“To be honest I was kinda expecting to be offered more. Based on how the system wrote my abilities and skills it seems to know all our histories and in great detail at that. Maybe in a little too good of detail.” I muttered that last part.
“What was that last part I didn't catch it?” she asked. I quickly replied
“Oh nothing.”
“Umm huh. Anyways it does seem a little odd you only got offered 105 skills in that case you are quite old and I was offered 30 and im only 25. But then again it sounds like you were offered much higher quality skills than me.” she said
“That is true. Also I can confirm that epic is the tier above advanced. I also was offered a skill that I believe was the tier above epic. It was a grand skill.”
“YOU GOT EPIC SKILLS AND A GRAND SKILL!” Sarah exclaimed.
“Quiet down I'm right next to you no need to scream. Also it would be best if the whole world did not know these things.” I said
“Oh sorry it's just insane. I get that you're old and have a lot of life experience but the highest ranked skill claimed is advanced and from what I hear it was from an olympic athlete. Not only that but since you were offered a grand skill it's safe to assume that you got offered multiple epic skills which is higher than the best skill rank that humans have claimed to have but you got one a rank higher.Just the information alone could be worth a ton let alone the fact you have the skill.”
“All I can say is that being alive for over two thousand years has to be worth something. If I don't get better skills than your average human who at best lives just past 100 then I don't know what the point would be.” I said
“Fair enough.” Sarah took another bit of her sandwich before continuing. “So what do your epic and grand skills do?”
I froze for a second but shook it off. I took another bite of my sandwich and answered.
“As for the grand skill I would rather not say. It references a time in my life I would rather not have to explain. As for the epic skills I was offered, 4 and 2 of them are related to the grand skill and I would rather not talk about them. As for the other two, one is related to me being one of the highest ranked living vampires. The other one is more or less about me being an immortal and the age and power that comes with it.”
“Interesting, you know now I'm more curious about this now. It is related to a time of your life? What were you, a legendary assassin or some famous tailor? Well I won't pry I will respect your wishes. As for the skill you did tell me about, it makes sense. Your race is an ancient vampire after all. So skills relating to being an old important vampire and an old powerful immortal make sense. Did you find any other interesting skills?” she said
“Thanks for really rubbing in the fact I'm old” Sarah blushed a little at my admonishment.
”and yes I did get a couple of other interesting skills. I narrowed down my list to 19 of the 105 skills. One of them gives me an experience bonus, another makes my skills level faster, and another one is almost the same as one of my racial skills. Speaking of which, did you find out if we are able to get rid of or replace skills? Also do skills we are offered go away if we don't pick them?”
“Thanks for reminding me. From what I read online you can remove and replace skills. But you lose all progress on the skill should you pick it back up. As for the skills you’re offered, what people said was that all skills you were initially offered you will lose. But if you actively try to gain the skill it will be offered to you again. One person was experimenting with the skill run and he leveled up before removing it. He then keeped running with the mental intent of getting the skill again. After about an hour of running he was offered the skill again even with all of his skill slots full. Once he grabbed the skill again it was back at level one.”
“Interesting… I wonder how that works? What about skills you were offered because of a specific achievement? I have a skill about being blessed by nature. If I deny the skill will I ever get the chance of getting it again or is it gone forever.” I pondered
“That… I can't tell you. Those like your skill about being an elder vampire might be skills that you can't be offered twice. Or you have to try for an extended period of time to get it again. But I’m just speculating here.”
“You might be right and that makes my choice for skills that much harder. I only have 8 spots and 19 skills to choose from with all but six of them being advanced or better. And even then one of the skills is identify and another skill but for items called Appraisal. From what the description reads the system is not only affecting living people but also inanimate objects as well.”
“Wow this really is just turning into a video game. Items, skills, dungeons next thing you know there are going to be world bosses.” Whether it was the systems pulling a prank on us or just comically good timing the system decided that now was the time for it to announce a world boss.
[World breaker system notification: The Dragon king Lucian has accepted the title of world boss.]
Sarah sat slack jawed staring at what I could only assume was the system notification. You could see a piece of lettuce stuck to her teeth. A moment later she put her head on the table and said. “I give up.”
I laughed profusely before I walked around the table having finished my lunch at this point and patted her back reassuringly.
“No, you're not allowed to give up yet. But you have to admit that was really funny.” I said knowing that it was not the best thing to say but it had to be said.
She sat up in her chair and finished off her sandwich. Then said, “Yeah the timing was perfect but come on. Anyways what do you plan to do about your skills? I'm not so worried about mine because I feel that in short order I will be offered better ones as time goes on. But for you it could be quite difficult to get better skills then what you were offered. I don't know how the tier system works and how generous the system will be but I can't imagine it will be handing out advanced and epic skills let alone grand skills willy nilly.”
“You have a point there. I will sit down with my list and go over it and determine what skills will be best to have. As I see it right now personal power is the most important thing. Stuff that will be useful later will not be helpful if we don't get to later. Especially with what I want to do there will be a target on my back and maybe even yours so I can't be skimping on power now for potential power later. There are exceptions to this like the skills that increase my leveling speed because they will help increase my power faster but other than that long term skills might have to take the ax.”
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“I can't really argue with that logic. There's no point in planning for the future if you don't make it to the future and with how unknown the future is looking right now.”
“My thoughts exactly. So did you end up with any interesting skills?”
“No, not really. The most interesting one I got was one about management. I would get a better ability to read people and navigate employee and customer problems. It might be helpful depending on how things move forward. The rest were either useless or basic like run jump sprint read. Things such as that. Nothing combat oriented unless you count identify as a combat skill.”
“I did not expect you to have any combat skill seeing you do not have any combat background. But I am surprised you didn't get anything for gymnastics seeing you were in gymnastics for a number of years.”
“I did get flexibility but that was about it. Maybe I will get something with my class but I don't know.”
Nodding I thought, Sarah would need to be trained in something. I don't really have any kind of weapons here or anything that would qualify for a weapon outside of the knives in the kitchen and a keepsake from a time long past. I guess martial combat will have to do for now.
“Sarah, I'm going to have to teach you how to properly defend yourself. We can start with martial combat and once we get our hands on some proper weapons we can look into training you in one.”
Sarah paled slightly and nodded. I can't imagine her liking the idea of having to defend herself in such a way. She has been fortunate in life and never really saw much violence. But that was about to change and she was going to have to change with that.
Having put it off long enough I left Sarah’s side and moved to the couch. I left her to brew on the topic. I can't hold her hand through all of this. She needs to take the necessary mental steps to move forward.
I got comfortable on the couch, grabbed my list and looked over it again.
Absorb Stats (Advanced)
Appraisal (Moderate)
Born Leader (Intermediate)
Child of the Night (Advanced)
Draconic Alignment (Advanced)
Elder Vampire (Epic)
Enriched Experience (Advanced)
Eternal Student (Advanced)
Heart of Gold (Intermediate)
Identify (Basic)
Kill Streak (Intermediate)
Living Weapon (Intermediate)
Marked (Advanced)
Moon Lite Strike (Advanced)
Nature’s Blessed (Advanced)
Presence of an Ancient (Epic)
Sex Goddess (Grand)
Shadow Step (Advanced)
Unbreakable Will (Advanced)
Looking over the list again there was a couple I could easily ax. Sex goddess is Absorb Stats but permanent so there is no need to take it over the other. Heart of Gold would be a nice skill in the future but Presence of an Ancient fills a different but similar role to it. Being able to show I am a wise person will help people talk to me and seek my counsel. Elder vampire is one of my 4 epic skills but I really have no use for it. There are no vampires around me right now and I don't plan on making an army of them. I have seen too many others do the same thing and end up dying for it. The skill simply does not suit me.
I'm down to 16 skills. I still need to cut half of these. I think the next one to take the ax would be unbreakable will. It is another good skill but unless one of the powerful immortals decides I’m in their way or a literal army of humans comes after me I don't believe I will be on the losing end of any fight. That is not taking into account what other creatures might have come over to our world with the reset of the dungeons and system but I don't believe this will be a problem in the short term.
Looking at the last three intermediate skills I have, born leader, kill streak and living weapon, I think I will have to pass on them as well. For the simple fact that they are not as good as the other skills. Moon lite strike is better then Living weapon. Even though I can't use moon lite strike when the moon is not out it is workable. Also if I plan right I can have every major engagement at night.
As for Born Leader, for what I am trying to do it could be invaluable but at the same time how much will it truly help me in this? I know how to speak to crowds, I can rally support among fighters and I can earn the respect of those around me. I’m not trying to stroke my own ego but with how much life I have lived I have gained a lot of skills. Obviously most of them are not up to the professionals of today doing the same thing but that does not mean that the basics of how many of these things have changed. No matter how many new ways there are to sew, the old way will still work. Maybe not as well but it still works.
Lastly, Kill Streak. I really do like this skill. It could have incredible potential, but is it better then the other skills I'm offered that also have incredible potential. I can only pick 8 and I simply don't see a point in picking this over the rest.
Now time to look at the only moderate skill that made it to my list appraisal. If what Sarah said was true I feel there is a good chance I can get this skill again later if I want. Also I don't believe that it will be useful until much later. I don't see many weapons or items in the near term being any better than the basic weapons that are made now. So what's the point in knowing one weapon is better then the next when everything is about the same.
I have 11 skills left on my list and all of the remaining ones are either really good or must haves. Let's look at the must haves. Identify, Enriched Experience and Eternal student. All three of these are incredibly important skills to me. Being able to tell the approximate power of an opponent will be crucial information. Of course there is always the chance they have an ability or skill like mine but I feel that will be uncommon. What would be the point of the skill if it was easy to get a skill that negates its effect. Both enriched experience and Eternal student will increase the rate at which I will grow stronger and being able to stay ahead of my adversaries will be key. So all three are must haves.
That leaves me with 8 skills and 5 slots. I think the next skill I'm going to have to pass on is marked. It will not only be a great skill to keep track of loved ones but opponents around me. One of the big drawback though is I don't know how many marks I will have at level one or how fast skills level so it could be I only have one or two of them at level 1 and have to level it a lot before it will be at all useful outside of keeping tabs on Sarah and I don't plan on letting Sarah go anywhere without me for the time being. Hopefully she will soon be strong enough that I won't have to worry about her.
Presence of an Ancient is too good of a skill not to pick up so that one is going on the list. Also Draconic alignment, the fact that I will get a flat percent decrease in damage done to me is huge also the fact it's one of the skills the stats it can evolve implies it can only get better.
Looking at the last of the skills I have available I only see two skills that I can really give up that being shadow step and Moon Lite Strike. Child of the night is simply better than Moon lite strike. Also if I read the skill right I need to be in contact with moon light for the skill to activate while Child of the night has no such stipulation. Shadow step will be a very hard skill to give up. To be honest it might be better to take then Nature’s blessed.
The feeling I needed to take the skill started to creep up on me again but I pushed the feeling down and went back to my thoughts.
But the opportunity cost of nature's blessed is too high. I don't know if I will ever get the chance to get this skill again. I don't know how it will affect the new creatures and plants or creatures in dungeons but I can't imagine this skill being bad. I would also feel bad about not taking the skill.
That leaves us with 8 skills. As for Sex goddess it has the potential to give me free stats and is a damn grand skill. No matter how much I don't want to take it I can't not.
With that I have my list. I mentally selected them out of my skill list and tried to add them as my general skills.
(Confirm taking Child of the Night (Advanced) Draconic Alignment (Advanced) Enriched Experience (Advanced) Eternal Student (Advanced) Identify (Basic) Nature’s Blessed (Advanced) Presence of an Ancient (Epic) and Sex Goddess (Grand) as your general skills. Do note all skills not taken will no longer be available. yes /no?)
From 105 to 8 I hope I never have to do that again. I mentally confirmed.