Jogging around the city had quickly revealed how little Kai's 14 stamina actually was. He could barely jog half a mile without getting completely exhausted.
Stamina has increased from 14 to 15. Current stamina 0/15.
Kai checked his notifications once he had very nearly collapsed from exhaustion. Stamina took much longer to replenish than mana, so while Kai remained exhausted from the absence of energy, he activated his reaction skill at a 10% reaction speed boost, to slowly drain his mana. Five seconds later, the mana drain started to physically hurt, but determined, Kai kept the skill active through tears. Ten seconds later, Kai blinked, and when he opened his eyes, everything was red. In a near panic, Kai deactivated his skill. He'd been crying blood.
Kai quickly opened his character log in his index.
Current stamina: 0/15.
Skill: lightning reflexes activated.
1 mana used for skill: lightning reflexes.
1 mana used for skill: lightning reflexes.
1 mana used for skill: lightning reflexes.
1 mana used for skill: lightning reflexes.
Exhaustion has reached dangerous levels. Further mana or stamina usage will be damaging to the user.
1 mana used for skill: lightning reflexes.
1 mental damage taken due to mana overload.
1 mana used for skill: lightning reflexes.
1 mental damage taken due to mana overload.
The log continued in the same fashion until Kai had deactivated his skill, by which time Kai had already gained a decent amount of damage to his noggin. It was a good thing he'd stopped, or else he'd have sent himself to the respawn room by accident. But even so, taking the damage did have some benefit. He now knew not to use up his mana when he already was exhausted. But that did give Kai a few questions. Was there a skill that lessened exhaustion from mana or stamina use, or would that just be exactly the same as having more stamina and mana?
There were so many things Kai didn't yet know of the world around him, and Kai would have to figure them all out if he wanted to explore everything there was to this world. Back to the library it is, or at least find a denizen who could answer Kai's questions. Then again, there wasn't a need to hurry, getting better stat pools was more important for now.
Kai tried to stand up, only found himself not capable of even that. His head was throbbing with the beating of his heart, which was beating faster than it had any right to be. His legs were too tired to move, let alone to carry Kai's weight. Right, Kai was still exhausted. He would have to remain on the ground for a short while, and maybe figure out how he could throw himself for a heal.
Five minutes later, Kai's mana had already reached its maximum, while his stamina had recovered enough for Kai to stand up. Next step was to figure out how to heal himself, which should be possible with his skill, as the healing worked on any entity Kai tossed. Kai didn't want to be stuck with a headache for the entire day, as hit points on average took about two hours per point to recover, and they wouldn't necessarily heal to one's hit point maximum if there was any damage such as badly broken bones or missing limbs.
Kai started by trying to jump, but that apparently didn't count as tossing one's self, since Kai didn't heal at all, and only caused his already throbbing head to hurt more. After a few attempts at grabbing himself, Kai attempted to throw himself in the air from a handstand. At first, he merely fell over, but after that, Kai set his feet to lean against a wall, before pushing against the ground. He wasn't strong enough, so Kai tried again with his shadow stride active for a brief moment. And finally, success. He healed a whole three hit points.
Skill: healing toss, novice 3, has increased to novice 4.
Hit points have increased from 18 to 19.
With one successful heal, it was simple enough to repeat the process, and quickly get his health to full. Feeling much better than he had moments ago, Kai headed on a jog towards the library. He could read while using his reaction skill to get more mana, and jog whenever he was going from place to place, or run all the short distances between the shelves. As for increasing his hit points, Kai wasn't exactly enthusiastic in getting damage. Kai could always let it occur naturally.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
By the time Kai arrived in the library, Kai had mulled over his skills. He had multiple useful combat skills, which enabled Kai to deal lots of damage over a short period, but the skills drained his mana quickly, or required preparation to activate like Thunderspear dance. What that meant, was that Kai could quickly end a fight against a single opponent, maybe two or three if he exhausted himself. But the moment Kai faced multiple enemies, he'd be done for rather quickly.
To combat this problem, Kai had three solutions. He could get a whole lot more mana, learn a new skill, or merge his skills to something entirely new. The library would be great for all that.
While Kai did enjoy Thunderspear dance, and shadow stride, he was frustrated by their limitations. Kai knew of only two moves to activate the lightning skill, those being jumping high in the air to strike down with the spear, or dashing at full speed at the target. He would either have to spend some real time training, or merge the skill into something easier to use. Shadow stride had a similar problem, as Kai was only able to use it in shadow. At night it was everything Kai could ask for, for a combat skill, but during the day, Kai was often unable to use it.
And this was all without mentioning one simple fact, Kai had practically nothing but combat skills. Fighting was fun, but if Kai were to live in this world, full of magic, mystery and impossible wonders, Kai would want some other skills. Something that would be nice in daily activities, ones that would increase his quality of life, along with being generally useful for pretty much anything.
Someone with a potioneering skill could likely make a potion for nearly anything, and the mana manipulation skill Kai had been offered after his trials likely had a similarly wide range of uses. Kai wanted something like that, utility skills that could be used for combat if necessary.
The library had exactly four detailed descriptions of such skills, those being the aforementioned potioneering and mana manipulation, along with enchanting and a skill called 'general crafting'. Each of them were either common or uncommon in rarity. Any other mentions of such skills were mentioned only as hypotheticals, rumors, or as skills which had their skill paths tightly kept as secrets by individuals or organizations.
One such skill was the 'wizardry' skill, taught only by a mages college, which allowed one to write some sort of instructions or symbols for spells, which would later be used to cast said spells.
Kai once again felt the beginnings of exhaustion from the loss of mana. While Kai had been reading, he had drained his mana to halfway empty, a dozen times over. It hadn't increased his skills at all, but Kai's mana had seen a gain of two points from it. Then Kai had an idea, what if he kept lightning reflexes active at around a one or two percent increase. It would drain one or two mana every ten seconds, which was about as much as Kai's mana filled every ten seconds.
Unsure whether his mana increased from its usage, or from how close to empty it was drained, Kai decided to give his idea a try. If it was the former, then Kai could constantly gain more mana.
After having fiddled with the fine tuning of his skill for a bit less than ten minutes, all the while observing his log to see if he was gaining or losing mana, Kai figured that he was recovering mana at around 1.21 mana every ten seconds. That meant he needed to get his lightning reflexes skill activated at a 1.21 percent boost. It took nearly an hour of fiddling, but eventually Kai's mana was stuck at 22/25 mana.
After that, Kai kept reading, until he was surprised out of his thoughts by a notification he hadn't been expecting
You have learned skill: mana manipulation (common), novice 1.
The moment the notification appeared, Kai could feel a slight sensation in his stomach. Not caring if the nearly imperceptible feeling was excitement or something else, Kai immediately opened his character sheet to check his new skills description.
Skill: mana manipulation (common), novice 1. Gives the user a 5n% higher ability to manipulate and feel their mana, where n is skill level.
The description was the same as in the books which had described the skill, even though Kai's method of learning it was different from what the books suggested.
Finished with inspecting his interface, Kai was about to close it, except he noticed something off.
Current mana: 25/25
Kai immediately checked his logs, to make absolutely certain his lightning reflexes were still active at 1.21 percent. It was, and as Kai scrolled through the log, he quickly figured out what had happened. His mana regeneration speed had increased from 1.21 mana every ten seconds, to 1.24, even though his maximum mana hadn't increased. The two values could be increased separately.
You have formed a new pool: Mana recovery. Current mana recovery: 0.024/0.124 mana per second.
Skill updated: Skill: lightning reflexes (rare), novice 7, has been updated to skill: passive lightning reflexes (rare), novice 8. Passively increases the user's reaction speed to supernatural levels, seemingly slowing down the world around them. Increases the user's reaction and mental processing speed by 2n% at the cost of 0.1 mana recovery. Increases reaction and mental processing speed by an additional 15n%, for the cost of 2n mana per second
That was absolutely not what Kai had expected from his little experiment. Sure enough, in his character sheet, Kai found a fourth value in addition to his hit points, stamina, and nana, that being his new mana recovery pool. Then Kai realized that the update his skill received, might not be exactly good. Lightning reflexes had become a passive skill, one which used up most of Kai's mana recovery, and constantly sped up his mind by 40%. Sure, at the cost of what equated to 1 mana every ten seconds, the sped up mind was brilliant. Problem was, Kai didn't know if he could turn the passive skill off.
A few quick searches from the various books on skills Kai had found, the answer seemed to be getting the passive skill to the apprentice stage, or by getting rid of the skill by merging or discarding it. Kai definitely didn't want the world to constantly be slowed down around him until he reached level 25 with the skill. He could imagine how dreadful any conversation might be if he'd have to listen to everything in slow motion. That meant Kai was left with merging his skills, which was something he'd planned to do anyways.