“Y’know, Greg? Punching out that crossdressing terminator actually felt pretty good,” Dick said once he was back in his private room inside the dojo. He’d just finished his teaching duties for the day.
“Yeah? Well, thank your Bignosity stat for that. You’ve got a ludicrous amount of brute strength. Actually, wait. If you’re that strong, why didn’t you just punch out those [Boarse] instead of digging that trap?”
“Digging’s underrated.”
“Yes, I understand that for some asinine reason, you think digging’s underrated, but your arms could’ve gotten the job done much quicker. I mean, heck! You literally did that in the [Rizzly Forest]!”
“Well, mamma always said that spice is the variety of life.”
“Ah!” Greg said, his eyes widening in comprehension. “I just realized something.”
“What?”
“Your stupidity. It’s genetic. Have you ever considered improving your Brain stat? It’d be cheap at your level, y’know?”
“Why, you! Mamma made me perfect! You got a problem with my intellicticals?”
“I, um. No, nevermind.”
“Well, good, then. But uh, out of curiorizzity, how much those cost?”
“Dick, you know you don’t have to keep adding ‘rizz’ to everything, right?”
“Just felt proper. Like payin’ respects to the old [Rizzenator]. Being respectable’s important, y’know?”
“Uh, huh. Sure. Why not pay respects to all the people you let die when you ignored god’s quest?”
Dick stared wide-eyed at Greg for a whole minute before saying, “No u.”
Greg waited another minute before replying. “SOOOOOO, you wanted to know how much it cost to update your stats? Well, good news for you, Dick! They start out cheap, but increase in price exponentially.”
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‘What’s that mean?”
“Let me put it in terms you can understand. At first, they only cost as much as a chinese-made truck.”
“So, free, then? Nobody buys that junk.”
“Well, not free, but inexpensive.”
“And?”
“And they go up in price to a Harley.”
Dick whistled. “Now that’s expensive.”
“Right. Leveling a stat from 1 —> 2 costs 1000 EXP. Remember, you can’t downgrade your NGU. So if you’ve just Number Go Up’d, you won’t have much EXP to spend on stat upgrades. Best time to do it is right before you NGU. Bring up your status screen,” Greg said, plugging his ears.
“STATUUUUUUS C’MERE YOU ORNERY LIL SHIT!”
The ornery lil shit popped right up, dominating Dick’s entire field of view and, being ornery AF, made him fall on his ass.
“Now, as nice as it is to pad word count with the full status screen, I’ll spare you this time,” Greg said to the audience.
“Who are you talking to? You crazy or something?”
Number Go Up: 33
EXP: 18444/19607
“See? You’re NGU 33 and you have 18,444 EXP,” Greg said, smoothly ignoring Dick. “But to get to NGU 33, you needed 17,744 EXP.”
“How’d you know all that?”
“Puhleez. I’m Greg!” Greg replied, as if that answered everything.
“Fair enough. These numbers give me a headache. What’s it all mean?”
“The meaning of life? That’s 42. But it means you have 700 EXP to spend. With another couple of levels, you’d be able to level a stat from 1 to 2. Now, you don’t actually have any stats at level one, thank god.”
“You rang?” God said, popping his his Cheeto-covered beard through a portal.
“No. Go away.”
“Mmmkay,” God replied, disappearing back through the portal.
“Right, so every stat level is double the previous one. So to get from level 2 to three, you’d need 2000 EXP, and so on. Your Bignosity’s at 6, which means you’d need 64,000 EXP to level that. Which you won’t have for a VERY long time.”
“Say, if I can punch people to outer space with Bignosity 6, why do I need to level it up?”
Greg fell silent. “Good point.”
“Doesn’t that mean your long-ass explanation was completely useless?”
“N-no! You see, litrpg readers love this shit,” Greg smugly proclaimed.
“Riiizzzzz.”