Treatise on Advancement - Terpiscore Shamal - University of Mumbai
Translated from native language to System Common
-begin excerpt-
System-based Skills can best be conceptualized as links directly to the System itself. The knowledge and capabilities therein are granted from and by the System. This is an inelegant and unclear explanation and is a generalization of how Skills work.
Each skill is unique in function for the skill. Multiple people can acquire the same skill, and its functionality for each individual will be the same. A hammer is always a hammer, as they say. How a person utilizes a skill will significantly determine the value of said skill.
Skills can be acquired in three distinct routes; advancement, use acquisition, and skill merge.
The System will offer a skill at every 5th level of an occupation. Individuals can often choose from multiple skills offered by the System. These skill options are always based on the individual and the occupation advanced. Species advancement will also offer skills, but these are always separate from an occupation and more focused on the individual’s species’ abilities.
Use acquisition is the most disorganized form of skill acquisition. People have reported gaining specific skills from training or repetitive action. This is not universally true for every person reporting. For example, the Skill ‘Basic Sword Use’ can be acquired from the repetitive use of a sword. Some have reported gaining it from using it in training after a short time, and others have gained it after years of using a sword in direct combat. There has been no correlation or causality found for either case.
Skill merge is an uncommon event but has been recorded and repeatable. When an individual has two skills that overlap, the System will merge the skills. The resulting skill will often be greater than the whole of the two parts.
-end excerpt-
A new skill, yes, please. I went into my skill tab and looked through the options. This was a little bit different than before. The first two were available.
1. Rapid Recovery (F)
Cost: None
Duration: Constant
Recover stamina and willpower at +50% rate and recover hit points at +10% rate. Cannot regenerate lost limbs or total destruction of physical form.
2. Danger Sense (F)
Cost: None
Duration: Constant
Gives a warning of impending danger. Time of warning is 0.01 seconds x perception.
The following two were gray, and I was unable to select them. I assumed it was because Engineer was only an F-grade occupation, and using its advancement would only allow me to choose F-grade skills.
3. Hunter’s Sense (E)
Cost: None
Duration: Constant
Detect approximate threat value of targeted creature, values marked as varying colors on nameplate or minimap. Reduces the value of stealth-related skills used by other entities.
4. Identify Value (E)
Cost: None
Duration: Constant
Identifies the grade and value of the touched object and any special properties.
There were two new selections to choose from, so that made me happy.
5. Repair (F)
Cost: Low
Duration: Sustained
Allows for the user to repair damage to any object touched. Additional materials will be consumed to enact a repair. Allows a user to determine what materials may be used for a specific repair.
6. Basic Engineering (F)
Cost: None
Duration: Constant
Allows for user to gain insight into the construction and composition of existing items. Allows the user to design and construct items of F grade or lower.
These two skills I knew about from Tukey. Both of them were very useful for someone like him. And also me if I used them in new and interesting ways. I lay there on the old mattress and pondered the options for a while. The utility of Repair was what sold me after I examined my head basher for damage.
Stolen story; please report.
Disruption damage was starting to take a toll on the mace. Some of the teeth of the gear were really showing the damage from repeated bashing. I selected the skill and felt a strange rush of knowledge pour into my head.
I held the mace and examined it. In my head, I got an indicator [Durability 87%]. That was new. I thought about how to fix it and understood instantly that more material of the same Sky Steel was required. I also knew that 98% was the best I could get it to without completely reforging the part. Very interesting. I’d need to get some more material from Freddie.
As exciting as that was, I was more excited to flip over to my quest page.
[Quest Unlocked: Species Advancement 1 of 7
Acquire Windcore Power Generator
Location added to minimap.
Reward: Windcore Power Generator, Experience
Time Remaining: 99:23:42
Penalty: Secondary Quest Activities]
I read that three times to lock it into my brain. Ninety-nine days to find a Windcore Power Generator. Whatever that was. I flipped over to my minimap and saw no specific locations near me, but I saw a little arrow pointing west. I had the feeling that it was further west than I understood. Like really far away west. I don’t know how I knew, but it wasn’t going to be a day trip.
Well, regardless, mission accomplished. Quest unlocked. I’d head home in the morning with my mighty treasure of a single pistol and a new goal.
I was undisturbed for the night and woke with a clear head and an idea of where to start. I packed up my stuff and got down to ground level. I had given up the idea of scavenging the area. Too many big bad bugs, and I really didn’t need the money.
I waited for a moment at the bottom of the building and sighed. It was raining, really fucking coming down too. Sheets of rain pounded down from the sky. I should have known. I could feel the water splattering against the side of the building. I wasn’t paying enough attention, I guess. Time to kill, I think. I’d rather not ride for hours in pounding rain.
I poked around the bottom few floors of the building. I wasn’t looking too hard. More just occupying my time. The apartments were mostly trashed. Windows had been broken out, and rot had set in long ago. Anything even vaguely edible had been eaten, even the drywall in some cases. Ruined furniture scraps and aluminum wall supports were all that was left in most cases. Even the copper wiring had been eaten or stripped by someone or something.
When I felt the rain taper off, I looked out a broken window and up into the sky. The thick black clouds were gone, and the sky looked brighter—time to go.
I pushed my bike out into the street and started heading home. One of the best features of my minimap was the compass. I had a knack for map reading and finding my way around. This helped immensely. The streets were flooded, but I wanted to get as far away from Bugtown as possible while the bugs were still sheltering from the rain.
Being out in the rain was a miserable thing. The streets were wet and often had standing water in the roadway. I maneuvered around the obstacles as best I could. Standing water could hide all sorts of potholes, broken pavement, and pitfalls. The rain fell far less furiously but still interfered with my vibration sense. Too many reflected sounds. Each raindrop distorted my view more than I liked.
I moved as fast as I could while being careful. I hit a hole so hard in one spot that it dumped me and the bike into a puddle. Now I was soaked head to toe, and my front rim was bent. I grabbed the rim and got the message [Durability 54%]. I had the instinctive knowledge of how to fix it. Just making it round enough to ride again was a simple application of strength. The Repair skill guided my hands, and I bent the rim back into round pretty easily. [Durability 76%], and now the bike was rideable again.
Grumbling about the injustice and lack of road maintenance, I pedaled away. After an hour, the rain finally stopped. Not that it mattered much to me. I was thoroughly soaked and muddy. When the bugs started emerging, I avoided them too. My route out of Bugtown was far more circuitous than I wanted, but whatever. When I left the hazard area, my mood soured further, no more free experience.
By the time I was back on the road and headed south, it was already noon. If I was going to make it home tonight, it would be late, and I was already in a foul mood. I figured that finding a place to dry off was more important than getting home quickly. I’d only get more angry the further down the road I went. Riding a bicycle in wet pants is less than entertaining—sort of like masturbating with a cheese grater.
In the suburbs, I veered off the road and found a nice big house that looked mostly intact. The doors had been kicked in long ago. Like every other abandoned place around, it was mostly overgrown and full of refuse. It was mainly dry inside, and that was good enough for me. After a few minutes of hunting around the house and yard, I gathered enough dry wood to make a fire. The fireplace in the home was intact, and I decided I would head south in the morning. I changed into a mostly dry set of clothes from my pack and hung my soaked ones in front of the fire to dry out. I’d have to clean them back home where there was running water.
I chewed some granola and thought about the Species Advancement quest I had. I was now about thirty miles south of Bugtown. The marker had yet to move, as far as I could tell. It was far to the west. I would have to get home to be sure, but the 99 days time limit and the distance now made more sense. Time for a road trip, I guessed. Home first, in any case.
The crackling fire and relatively peaceful ruined home were calming, and I fell asleep. I woke up in the early hours of the morning and gathered my things, back on the road with an empty belly and a clear head.
The day was windy and spotty rain caught me on the way home—nothing for it but to keep going. By lunch, I was hungry. I hadn’t packed my supplies well enough. My spill into the puddle had ruined some of my food supply. Now I was hungry. Lesson learned. By early evening I was hangry and cursing with every breath. Again I was wet, cold, and in a less-than-stellar mood.
When I got to the city gates, I noticed something wrong. The alert lights were lit up around the wall. The gate was open, and I asked what was going on. The guards told me there had been multiple murders, and the town was on lockdown. My heart thudded in my chest as I sped home.
I thundered up the stairs and phased through the door, not even waiting for someone to open the locks. Inside I saw Lina in the kitchen and Tukey in his workshop. I dropped my stuff and breathed deeply.
Lina poked her head out of the kitchen and saw me, “Hey! Welcome back. You hear the news?” She asked in a voice more subdued than usual.
Tukey rolled out to the entry of his workshop. “Yes, welcome back.”
“What is going on?” I asked as I put my bike into the store room.
“Someone is killing people. It’s not pretty.” Lina said sadly.
I could tell she was holding something back, “What is it?”
“They got Meera’s dad, Sanjan. Ripped him apart like some wild beast. Meera found him, and she’s real shook up. They all are.”