26 - Chapter 25 - Day 1811

Adya was confused by Jason’s response. She knew that he was incapable of lying to her. She decided to use this opportunity to get to the bottom of this new mystery.

“Tell me what stats you have visible on your status,” she commanded Jason. “Also what are the averages, and average stat gained per level.”

Jason looked confused, but answered anyway. “I have nine stats. Strength, Dexterity, Agility. Intelligence, Wisdom, Perception, Spirit, Intuition, and Verve.” He replied. “When the system unlocks, the average is around 10 in each stat. Then the number of stats you gain per level will depend on the rarity of your class. A tier 1 class will give on average 10 stats per level, but it may be already preallocated. Every tier up roughly doubles the number of stats. Some classes may change that a bit, but not by a lot. So Tier 2 would be 20 stats per level, tier 3 would be 40 stats per level.”

Adya thought through the information. With a tier 10 class that would be a monstrous 10240 stats per level, the equivalent of 1024 levels of tier 1 class. She thought her mother had had a tier 4 class, so she would be getting around 80 stats per level. Adya with her average tier 8 class would be 1280 stats per level.

Surely the tier of the class could not be so broken. “How does one increase the rarity of a class?” she asked.

“Apparently there is some way to get good starting classes, but we just heard rumours about that. After you get your first class, at levels 50, 100, 200, 400 and so on you get the opportunity to get a better class. It depends on your achievements, skills and a bunch of other stuff, so I have heard. But you only get the increased stats from when you improve your class. So if someone had a better class at level 0, then the weaker class holder can only catch up if they get a higher rarity class. That’s all I know.”

Of course the nobles would keep the knowledge locked up, thought Adya. Why let everyone get ahead. There always had to be those that choose to keep others down, either because they thought they had the right, or because they wanted to keep the benefits for themselves.

Still, she had a starting point now. Adya did not believe that just the tier would produce so much difference, it must be the way power scaled that made the difference. The numbers could not be linear, that much was clear. No matter what if her increase in body had gone from 2 to 500,000, then she would have destroyed her house by running through it. She had not measured her weight before forming the core, still she did not feel like she was much heavier than she had been before. So, the only way for her to find out more was to run more controlled experiments.

“What resource pools do you have, and what is the regen like?” Adya asked Jason.

“We have mana and stamina. The regen is usually between 1/20th and 1/10th per minute of the size of the pool.” replied James.

So they really didn’t know about will power as a renewable pool. So why did she have access to it? Without that her soul mark would not have been possible. Was she using it even in the protection formation? Also why did she only have 3 stats instead of the usual 9. Did that mean that each stat for others was 3 times more effective in their stats.

For example if someone had 1000 in each of the 3 body stats of strength, dexterity and agility, would that be equal to her having 1000 in body, or would she need 3000 in body to match the same stats.

Also how were the stats calculated. Was it based on the physical size, or something else. Would a 7’ tall man weighing 200kg be able to do the same with a 1000 strength stat as someone her size, at 4’ and 25kgs.

There were so many open questions, and she currently had no basis to even start to look for answers. Just from James’s answers, though he was forced to answer all her questions by the soul mark, he had skillfully evaded providing any details about his actual stats. Was it that taboo to talk about peoples exact stats?

Perhaps she should take a different tack, ask for level and tier of class, and then plot a range of best and worst case scenarios. “James, what is your level and class tier?” asked Adya. “Also, can you have more than one class?”

James actually started laughing at Adya’s question. “More than one class,” he chortled, “only if you have more than one soul. No idea how you would go about getting more souls.” It was clear from his answer that he found the question too silly to answer. It took him a few minutes to stop laughing, then he continued. “I have a tier 3 class, upped from a tier 2, and just reached level 68.”

So he had 1300 to 2000 stat range, if he fully loaded his wisdom stat, then the max would be around 1000 in her estimation. She asked Sai if there was a record of how much willpower was used in the creation of the formation. Sai had not been monitoring, but estimated the expenditure at around 200,000. The full regen for the 10 minutes had not been used, as will power stones were still being produced. So in the best case it was a 100 times the relevant stat, at worst it was 1000 times the relevant stat.

“When your crew comes in, I want to know their class tier, and level,” said Adya. “On top of that I would like to know the exact stats they have in intelligence, wisdom and perception.”

“And if they don’t want to tell you?” asked a suddenly fearful Jason. “Will you not give them the option of the soul mark?”

“If they don't want to tell me, then they can either give me the three added together to the nearest 100.” replied Adya. “That is as far as I am willing to compromise.”

James nodded in response. He could see Adya was being reasonable. In her position she could demand the answers and let his crew die for refusing. Others would have done exactly that. He was starting to respect this girl who had forced him to capitulate and then proceeded to imprison then enslave him.

Dexter finally returned with 2 more of the bandits.

“Sorry miss, I was getting them all organised now that we have started, so that it will be faster going forward.” said Dexter without needing to be prompted. “The rest will be queued up by the guards in 10 minute intervals.”

“Excellent work Dexter, “ replied Adya. “Don’t forget what I said James, I need the information on each one, just speak the information clearly, even if you think I am not listening.”

With that began the first of, what would turn out to be many, soul marking sessions. Dexter took the position of explaining the choice to the captured bandits as they came in.

After they accepted the only choice they had if they wanted to live, then James would ask for the stat information and Adya would proceed to draw the formations as fast as Sai could manage it. Once they confirmed that the soul mark was in place, they would be sent back to their cells and the next pair called in.

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At around 12 minutes a pair, with a few refusing the offer and choosing to die, they were done in just over two hours. The five who had decided they would rather die, were sent back to their cells under guard.

After the intense session, Adya needed a break. James went to collect all the ex bandits who had decided to accept the soul marks, and they were moved to the barracks. They were no longer a threat, so Adya saw no need to keep them imprisoned. She would deal with them the next day. They had just gone from being in jail to some of the most trusted retainers on the estate.

James asked permission to try and convince the five who had refused to see if he could change their mind in private. Adya was happy to let him try. She had no reason to waste assets if she could bring them under her control. More importantly she wanted to review the data she had gathered with Sai.

As Adya walked around the estate, she worked with Sai to get an understanding of the numbers. Her worst case projections were borne out by the numbers. Where she had accurate figures from those who had chosen to divulge it, she gave greater credence, compared to where they had given her an average or rounded figure. She also worked to see if there was any correlation between her exact willpower usage and any stat or combination of stats. It was the kind of thing that would have taken hours without an AI to crunch the numbers, but thankfully Adya had Sai.

The amount of will power the formation needed was easily calculated by multiplying the intelligence stat by the wisdom stat, then multiplying the total by 79 and adding 8000. The 8000 was easily explained as a setup cost as it was always consistent. The wisdom times intelligence was also straightforward as they were the actual stats. The 79 times multiplier was the open question. It basically meant that unless someone was on average a 100 times stronger, then they had no chance to enforce a soul mark in the manner she was doing. No wonder, even if someone discovered the method, that the soul marks were not in general use. Why would anyone that much stronger be sitting around creating formations on weaklings. Not only that, but even formation masters would need to do one at a time and would take a lot longer to create each one. It had definitely been a productive day.

She really needed to work out how to gift passive skills to others. She needed to confirm whether she was special or if the willpower was a renewable resource for everyone. If she could let others use her passive for creating willpower stones, she could both see the impact on people of draining that pool and whether they actually had it. Something was definitely happening.

The only thing she could put all the difference she was experiencing was down to the scion protocol. She had exited the protection protocol she had been granted 95 years too early. Still she still had partial protection, she hoped, from the scion protocol.

Once she finished her analysis for the time being, she thought about the next time she wanted to focus on. She was going to use her soldiers to target and subjugate the shadowed hand, at least the local chapter. She would just go along for those operations, but would do no more than force the soul mark on captured leaders. Then, as the people came in, she would remove their crude formations and replace it with hers, taking full control of all members of the organisation.

Her next research task had to be the mana coin creation machine. That would open up so many avenues of advancement for both her family and her. She couldn't think of any other step that promised to deliver so much benefit.

She also wanted to learn the skill telekinesis. Though how she would go about doing that was up in the air. The sheer utility of gaining that skill would be immense. As Sai and Mai would be able to use the skill to both create and fight directly. It would basically give her many more arms. She was currently only utilising a small fraction of the passive processes that she could have running simultaneously.

She had not checked, but her parallel processing trait was dependent on her mind stat. She had four from the trait and a further thirty five had been added by the passives being converted across. Just how many more had been added by her mind stat jumping to 16.5M.

Entity status

Name: Adya Gurg

Body: 500,000 [x2.0] [x1.0]

Mind: 16,500,000 [x2.0] [x1.0]

Soul: 16,500,000 [x2.0] [x1.0]

Cultivation Stage: Rank 2 (F)

Stamina: 1,000,000

Stamina regeneration: 10,000 per minute

Willpower: 33,000,000

Willpower regeneration: 330,000 per minute

Mana: 33,000,000

Mana regeneration: 3,300,000 per minute

Mana density: Rank 2 [x1]

Essence: 0

Entity 1:

Class Ranger (Rarity Rank 8 - Guru) - {Hidden}: Level 1

Entity 2:

Class Scholar (Rarity Rank 8 - Guru) - {Hidden}: Level 1

Entity 3:

Class Warlord (Rarity Rank 9 - MahaGuru) - {Hidden}: Level 1

Entity 4:

Class Font of Knowledge (Rarity Rank 9 - MahaGuru) - {Hidden}: Level 1

Entity 5:

Class Merchant (Rarity Rank 7 - Grand Sage) - {Hidden}: Level 1

Entity 6:

Class Diplomat (Rarity Rank 7 - Grand Sage) - {Hidden}: Level 1

Entity 7:

Class Child (Rarity Rank 1 - Trainee) - {Displayed}: Level 0

General Skills

Waking Meditation: Level 19

Scan Detection: Level 6

Energy Manipulation: Level 49

Regeneration Control: Level 10

Core Shield (Unique): Level MAX

Passive Skills

{Custom} Mana Stone Creation (Automated): Level MAX

{Custom} Will Power Stone Creation (Automated): Level MAX

{Custom} Stamina Stone Creation (Automated): Level MAX

Personalities

Mai: Online

Sai: Online

Traits

Trait 1: Universal Language Guru (Rank 8)

Trait 2: Soul Storage (Rank 11)(MAX)

Trait 3: Perfect Loot Perfect Essence (Rank 8)(MAX)

Trait 4: Parallel Processing (Rank 8) - Capacity 103 Cores

Trait 5: Perfect Memory Processing (Rank 8)

Trait 6: Gestalt Entity (Rank 8)

Achievement: Passive skill creator - for creating your own passive skill all class passive skills are converted to Parallel Processing Capacity.

Achievement: Gestalt Mortal Prodigy - for unlocking the ability to directly manipulate the regeneration of all 3 core energies whilst still being mortal all stats effectiveness is increased by 100%

Achievement: Cultivation Prodigy - for unlocking cultivation and forming three cores on your first attempt and at below the age of 10, unique skill Core Shield granted.

Upon checking her status page, the number had only jumped to 103. That seemed like it was a lot less impressive than a jump to 16.5 million stat points should be. The 16.5M had increased the capacity by 64.

Again Sai took up the burden of running number sequences to work out what was going on. It took a while even for Sai to come up with a sequence that fit the numbers. So the sequence was complicated, for every multiple of 10, she received 9 additional cores. So from 1-9 gave her 9 cores, and so did 10-99. The sequence continued. 9 for 1-9, 9 for 10-99, 9 for 100-999, 9 for 1000-9999, 9 for 10000-99999, 9 for 100k-999k, 9 for 1m-9m, 1 for 10m. Apparently the core was added at the increase to the next full jump, so the core should increase at 20m stat points. She didn’t have any way of understanding if this progression applied only to parallel processing cores, or if a similar system worked on the power curve as well.

Though it could explain why the cultivators would become so powerful if that was the case. A first ranked cultivator could substantially increase their power over a non cultivator of a much higher level. So many questions, and Adya would do her best to find the answers.