Training Alone

Fifty combined points of Wisdom and Intelligence had turned my brain to burning mush, lit my nervous system ablaze with unearthly delight, and singed my every cell with their effervescent radiance. It was nothing compared to what a thousand points in one stat had done, and yet I couldn't afford to underestimate comparatively small amounts of points; what if I tried to boost a stat in combat, but was a touch too confident in my ability to remain functional under mindblending pleasure? I could easily fuck up and kill myself if I don't get a grip on these damnably delectable points.

And that was only partially a thinly veiled excuse to increase my stats and feel that sweet burn.

Having already conducted an experiment with two separate stats, I decided it would be prudent to compare its effects to an equal amount of points dropped in a single stat. I didn't want to use the same stats, partially because I wanted to test the different effects of each stat and partially because I just felt like spreading my points around a bit, so I settled on putting fifty points into Will. It bore a similarity to Wisdom and Intelligence, being more of a mental (or spiritual, I wasn't entirely sure if the distinction was important here) stat than something more physical like Strength.

The moment the point increase finalized, white fire raced along my cells, touching each and every one but focusing most of its blazing love upon something intangible in my mind; something that danced along my neurons, yes, but twisted through my soul like boiling, half-gaseous molten sugar even more. It was more intense than my previous test with Wisdom and Intelligence had been, burning brighter and deeper but not encompassing the same things in the same ways.

When the fires faded, I was still on my feet, if hunched over so far I was practically bent in half and panting like a particularly excited dog. My brain still held a lingering, tingling warmth to it for a few seconds as I got my bearings, the feeling resonating with an ineffable burning in my soul that faded just as fast. I took several deep breaths in quick succession, trying to get a grip on myself as my clawed hands braced against my knees with barely enough strength to keep me from pitching forward onto my snout.

I shook myself from head to toe, twisting about as the tingles faded slowly into a pleasant phantom sensation and my breathing leveled out. Well, I can confirm that putting points into a single stat results in a more intense rush than an equal amount of points distributed over multiple stats. The fact I didn't fully fall over, despite the oversight that not lying down entails, did somewhat impress upon me that I could, technically, increase my stats in less than optimal situations without necessarily harming myself. I didn’t exactly intend to ever need that knowledge but if life only went as we intended it to, I’d already be immortal.

I sighed, thinking over what I wanted to test next before deciding to do a smaller scale experiment; one point in each stat vs nine points in one stat. I needed to know the effects of each stat, how it felt to increase each of them, and how much each stat changed me. Knowing exactly how much stronger (or as close as I could get with the decided lack of precision measuring equipment available to me) a point of Strength makes me probably won't save my life, but it conceivably could, and thus it's worth knowing.

I shook my head, briefly wondering if someone might have written a book on this or if Markus or Rokharth might be able to just tell me if I asked, but I dismissed the thought as soon as it came; even if I could trust them to tell the truth, I couldn't trust them not to use the knowledge of my ignorance against me. I suspect they already believe I know nothing about the system given they think (not entirely wrongly) that I'm very young, but asking specific questions like that would tell them I didn't just read it out of a book. If I had read it from a book or heard it from someone else, I would probably know at least some of the minutia but possibly not what it actually looks like, thus not having relatively academic knowledge but asking questions about the relatively basic specifics could be enough for them to guess I have access to the system.

I have no actual idea if having such access is uncommon, but even telling them I don't know that could be an opening for them to exploit; especially given how easy it would be for them to feed me false information, either to get me killed, hinder my growth, or manipulate me into actions favorable to them but less than optimal to myself. That's the dangerous thing about information, even the admittance of lacking it can be used as a weapon against you by the charismatic and unscrupulous; this is only made all the worse by living in a world with decidedly limited access to free and fact checkable information.

Haaaa, I miss the internet; it may have been full to bursting with liars and madmen, but at least there were so many of them you could aggregate something approaching accuracy.

I slapped my muzzle lightly a few times, trying to pull my thoughts from twisting wisps of nostalgia back to the sharp edge of reality; much as I hated it, I had long ago had the simple truth that reality doesn't change just because you don't like it drilled into my skull. Melancholic despair shoved firmly to the back of my soul where it belongs, I quickly threw a point into each stat and let that sweet fire sweep me away.

For a few seconds, anyway. I felt only the barest embers of that pure blaze sweep across my body and soul for but a brief instant, encompassing all of me but only for a moment; it was like sparking a lighter but letting the flame die the same instant it was born, barely warming even the things fully bathed in that ephemeral flame. Other than drawing a twisting gasp from me, the feeling was barely an echo by the time my mind properly registered it.

I took a deep breath, shaking my limbs in a futile attempt to steady the faint tingling in them. I released my breath slowly through my nose, feeling the already faint embers of the changes fade away with the carbon dioxide leaving my body. While a large part of me wanted to just sit and gather myself, I decided to try pushing myself to actually move and recover as quickly as I could. It took a few seconds for proper sensation to overtake the phantom burn, but no true sluggishness or neuropathy plagued me. So far, while I wouldn’t feel confident in my survival if I tried to increase even a single point in active combat given the danger of even minor debilitation, a handful of points in unstable but not actively dangerous situations may be workable.

As soon as I felt I had a decent grasp on how long it would take to be fully combat ready (which I estimated at a little over fifteen seconds, a rather noticeable time in a fight), I selected a stat at random and dumped nine points in. I would repeat this experiment with each stat in turn to get a feel for the differences, so which I started with in particular was irrelevant.

One by one, I bathed what the system deemed my vital components in brilliant white fire, focusing my thoughts on what was burned with each stat and trying to grasp how the ethereal blaze altered them as it went. I didn't have even half the mystical knowledge that would be needed to parse exactly what this incredible sensation my mind seemed to naturally envision as white fire was actually doing to my cells and spirit, but something told me that trying to figure it out was a good idea.

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I don't trust such feelings generally, especially in a world where I knew for a fact emotions can be inflicted upon others, and yet my point-addled brain followed it nonetheless. Were I in a more sober state of mind, I'm sure I'd question thoroughly where this impulse came from; even though I'm fairly sure that such curiosity likely just came from my own desires, caution costs you nothing and can save your life. It didn't much matter regardless, given how little progress I made on actually understanding what was going on when the system improved my stats.

I was left a twitching mess by the end of my small experiment –and wasn't that an odd thought; just a few short weeks ago spending a hundred points in one go would be an excruciatingly exorbitant expense, yet now I do it as a prelude to actually properly specing myself out– but I felt I had a much better grasp on how my points actually effected me. Which is to say, I still had no fucking idea what they were actually doing, but I had a decent grasp on where they were doing it; I couldn't tell you for the life of me why the low, deep buzzing burn of upgrading Strength was different to the electric, pulsing burning of Agility, but I sure could tell there was a difference.

I grumbled lowly, slowly transitioning into chuckling then full blown belly laughing as I pondered the potential pointlessness of spending my time on this. I shook it off easily, but I couldn't deny my amusement at the malingering thought that it may have been better to just dump my points as I saw fit, then get to actually killing and earning more points. I knew this thought was a trap, however; while spending my time actually gaining and spending points may be more viscerally satisfying, gaining power without gaining control would just leave me fighting below my weight bracket forever.

A man who knows how his body works, knows everything he can do with what he has, can often beat a man with more at hand but less knowledge of how to actually use it. This is not always true, a novice with a gun is usually more dangerous than an expert of the staff; but in an otherwise even fight, skill and knowledge can be the edge that decides victory or death. Now, I strive to avoid even fights whenever possible, but I'd prefer to have as many edges as I can get my paws on just in case.

There's no such thing as "too many advantages" after all, not when death is the price of failure; I'd rather live in dishonor than die for fair play any day.

Impatience weighing on my mind nonetheless drove me to actually looking through my stats and trying to pick where I wanted to put my points. Endurance has saved my life several times (and may have its own path to immortality, come to think of it), but I've always been of the opinion that the best way to survive being hit is to not get hit. That said, I put my temptation to just break up my points between Strength and Agility to continue my path towards being a dodge tank aside; the fact my senses already couldn't keep up with my speed told me Perception may need to be considered a high priority stat, at least secondary to increasing said speed.

Not only would it help me spot spies like that bastard that confirmed my story to Markus (it may have been convenient, but that didn't make it any less unsettling) in the future, but it would undoubtedly help me spot future ambushes quicker. Seeing an attack coming can mean the difference between a riposte and dying mid thought; and with that thought, the rose deeply unsettling concern that something could be lurking, invisible, in the room with me right now, and I'd have no way of knowing. If someone with better stealth capabilities than my Perception (and related abilities) could perceive wanted me dead, I wouldn't even know I was in danger until I was already dying.

Of course, there could also be somebody with some bullshit ability to completely hide themselves from all senses, including touch, such that they could walk right up to me and slice my throat open without me even feeling it. Or someone who can attack from parallel realms or timelines or whatever, meaning they aren't even in the same dimension for my senses to pick them up. That's the kind of thing I'm not confident any realistically achievable level of Perception alone could detect; while I have little doubt Perception twenty billion could likely see through any mortal deception and gaze beyond realms, actually getting that many points was a very long term goal.

I knew one possible solution, one I dearly wanted but knew I could not yet have. Magic. Magic might have some way of detecting such things, of going beyond the limits of my flesh and alerting me to things my senses could not possibly notice on their own. I couldn't deny I deeply longed for magic, the true power that was granted by manipulating mystical energies. The only problem was that I had no means of gaining magical knowledge, and didn't have the years of time it would undoubtedly take to actually achieve usable results.

My desire for magic, for the kind of raw, cosmic power mystical forces might be able to grant me burbled up in Wisdom and Intelligence, but once more I pushed it back with a sigh. The same problems I had with pursuing magic before still exist; I have no idea where to even begin learning such arts (asking Rokharth or Markus seemed like a poor decision, though I couldn't deny that they may be my best bet…), nor am I sure my species even lives long enough to achieve useful power levels. I forlornly put aside my dreams of bending reality to my whim and settled on more presently achievable ideas, for now. I made several mental notes to try and research magic when I had the time (and to steal any tome or focus like objects I found), but otherwise put the subject from my mind.

While no stat was useless (as far as I knew), Will and Perception seem to be the most immediately important; Will, because I'm absolutely terrified of being mind controlled, and Perception to be able to actually use the speed I've gained. If I can't see what I'm doing and where I'm going at max speed, that speed is barely an advantage; it's not an outright detriment, as running in a straight line or rapid and random attacks have their place, but it's definitely suboptimal.

The decision to prioritize Perception over Will was a somewhat difficult one, though in the end it boiled down to the simple grudgingly acknowledged fact that while I might face a mind controller in the near future, I almost certainly would run into physical threats trying to use trickery and ambushes sooner than later. The undeniable possibility that I absolutely could run into some sort of mind bender that could twist my thoughts to their whims sent icy centipedes skittering down my spine, but I also couldn't deny the fact that, based on my own experiences, the odds of facing a more martial danger was much greater; I had run into beasts and bastards trying to kill me since the first minute I opened my eyes in this world, but I've yet to encounter (or at least be killed by given I couldn't be certain my memories hadn't been altered) any mindbenders.

Before I actually added any points, I ran a lap of the room as fast as I could, damn near slamming face first into a wall as the world turned into a blurred mess of colours and vague shapes. This wasn't just for the faint amusement of nearly injuring myself, but to establish a baseline for before I dumped a thousand points into Perception. I wanted to get an idea of just how much of a practical change a large amount of points would inflict. However, I had read enough transhumanist fiction to be wary of enhancing my senses too much too quickly, so I decided to start with two hundred points, then add three hundred, then five hundred.

I ran a hand through the slick fur on my head, killing my scent out of habit before I sat down cross legged in the center of the room and closed my eyes. I didn't want to be standing in case I fell over, nor did I want to risk having my eyes open when they were about to be enhanced significantly. Taking a deep breath, I dumped two hundred points into Perception in time with releasing a deep sigh…

And felt my eyes explode out of my head, white fire consuming my senses and turning everything I perceived into incomprehensible, swirling madness.