Dao… when did … Joe’s thoughts derailed at that. Dao seed… read enough books… start small grow it big… always thought seeds were kinda dumb… biggest it’s going to grow to is a tree. If you want growth… shoulda started as a quark… but this is just… how is this going to fit in with the system? I don’t understand what… Joe blinked in surprise, staring at popup for his title. It’d changed.
Quark of Luck (Quark): You have increased your Dao beyond mortal limits, developing your luck a hundred times beyond average mortals. You have begun your journey in developing a dao of luck. Good luck on your journey, mortal.
He saw it change to Quark of Luck, then the parenthesis shifted to quark seed, spazzed out, then shifted to just quark after that. Joe frowned. OK… that… weirds me out… but still… how is dao and cultivation supposed to work with a system like this? What does it even mean? And how does it work? The Matriarch… right… this morning, the Matriarch talked about exercise as cultivation, so… but… Is my understanding of ‘cultivation’ and ‘dao’ too off? Too many web novels? What am I even supposed to do about this? Get my little carpet and think about it? He wrestled with the thought for a time but then his curiosity settled as he found no outlet since it all made no sense of any kind, not with his current understanding. He stared at it for a long time, then sighed and turned to what he could figure out. So... hundred times average… so how does that work?
He flipped over to his status then grinned to see his new luck. Holy… Wow! OK. That’s nice. Two hundred thirty two and some odd luck. If I remember right… let me check… yeah, only got something like fifteen or twenty luck last I checked… so wow… Very nice! Then… that’s gotta mean I’m getting three times per stat, right? One per title from titular master and two per title from titular terror… so... ok… Definitely useful, at least for luck.
Joe sighed. Moving on.
Joe excitedly turned from his titles to his skills, wondering at what he would find but struggled to calm his excitement down since skills seemed to be a mixed bag, and mostly not good.
Loki Priest
Truth Reading: The ability to feel the nature of a statement and to know whether it is the truth or not.
Change Main Job: Change the main jobs of people a few times per day.
Change Sub Job: Change the sub jobs of people very few times per day.
Change Extra Sub Job: Change the extra sub jobs for people very few times per day.
Loki priest proved as expected but the one surprise was the last skill. He took a careful look at it, seeking out help and quickly learned that it was a simple job change for the extra sub jobs beyond the first. Ah… no wonder changing the second and third sub job took so much effort… and another job to just change jobs? Sheesh… That irritated him a lot, at first, because it just added more work and effort to changing jobs, but then he grew a bit happy, realizing it just gave him more slots per day to change jobs. Of course, he now had to char: another skill and level it if he ever dropped his priest jobs and that most certainly irritated him, quite a bit. Joe turned his thoughts to the next job: staff warrior.
Staff Warrior
Inherit: #&$*#&, Mercenary, (&#$&#, Duelist, Soldier, Gladiator, Horseman, Warrior
Defense +++: A small increase in the defensive capabilities of your weapon.
Staff: Ability to wield a staff.
Attack Speed ++: A tiny increase to your weapon’s speed in attack.
Range +: A miniscule increase to your weapon’s range.
He sighed. Whelp… some cool ideas there and a disappointment all at the same time. He didn’t need to look any further, everything seeming to make sense easily enough except for some titillating details in the first referencing two more jobs he didn’t know. He turned to the next.
Crafter
Creativity: An increase to creativity towards any crafting work.
$&*#@(): Unknown.
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Well… that is a disappointment… but that first skill. Joe raised his eyebrows at that and considered. That could be… incredibly powerful! A boost to creativity! Man… The crafter job itself seemed to be one of those useless ones that opened up an entire tree. They also seemed to have some pretty powerful capabilities but were uniquely limited with those abilities which didn’t allow them to actually do anything. The opening job to the education tree was educated and it opened up a sub job. The opening job for the faith job was similar, having three char: skills all doubling stats; granted, only a single stat. But other than that, it didn’t do anything else. It simply increased stats. Joe frowned. Hope the next ones a bit better.
Noble Groom
Becalm Horse: Skilled at calming horses.
Clean stall: Skilled at cleaning stalls.
Animal Grooming: Skilled at grooming animals.
Joe groaned as he pursed his lips. He paused, struggling to think of anything, then just rolled his eyes and did nothing to even try to find the silver lining, swiping it closed and turned to leave. He picked up his bag and made sure to ask the inn keep about the best place to find a fletcher, but that proved to be very difficult as the inn keep had never even heard of fletchers, so Joe had to show him an arrow before the man finally waved him to something that sounded a bit like a carpenter, which, to be honest, didn’t seem like a bad idea, so Joe found himself deep into crafter’s row, carefully looking through the shops and side streets for what might be useful to him.
After a few moments, Joe found some shops that seemed to work on wood in a finer way than was typical of larger pieces and figured they might have a good chance at what he needed. He did ask them if there were fletchers first, but all of them confessed confusion about what a fletcher was and when he showed them arrows, they proved their confusion claiming they did not know what they were. Joe explained their purpose and showed how they worked and even used his bow to show an example of its use. The carpenters in the area began calling in other friends and coworkers who all began to become curious with the work. The carpenters started to split into two groups and Joe realized quickly it was a difference between those that worked on large furniture and those that worked on small and delicate items. Those that worked on larger pieces stepped back but seemed interested in the discussion and watched from around the outside. One rather shrewd looking carpenter had called over one of his apprentices and sent them running off to another part of the city, but Joe didn't question it, continuing on explaining.
Joe ended up discussing details with the carpenters for some time until he was able to get them actually willing to make some. When he asked how many monsters usually came in a tide, they replied with similar numbers as Garnedell had explained and realized he’d want thousands of arrows if he was going to be effective from the city walls over the couple of days or weeks that the monster tide would last. When he ended up asking for exactly that, the excited but calm discussions immediately escalated to a flurry of exclamations declaring it impossible. The discussion went back and forth for some time until Joe simply ended it by dropping a couple cores on the table.
“Right. I’m not really here to argue. I want as many arrows as you can make. For those who make a hundred, I will give you one core. For each hundred I will give one core. Are any interested?”
The clamoring changed to cries declaring their willingness although Joe made sure to explain very clearly that the arrows and fletching had to be perfectly straight and the point appropriately fastened. He quickly quietened their greed by being very blunt, stating he would check the arrows before ever purchasing them. Several of the carpenters that had been in the outer circle who were the large furniture carpenters backed off after hearing that as did a very few of the finer carpenters.
Joe didn’t stay much longer, although he did leave behind one of his arrows, asking that all share it and that he expected its return. Joe then left and headed quickly to the dungeon once again, changing his jobs as he went. He gave himself the next Loki job which happened to be abbot. He put that in the main job, then slotted in doctor, and guide in two of the spots. Guide was one of the available partier jobs, so he hoped to possibly get a party going that included all of them but given the name of the job, he wasn't confident but unlocking another job was always a help.
Finally, he found that the staff warrior job had actually opened up several other jobs: staffman, spearman, spetum, voulge and guisarme. Joe found himself confused about what the last couple even were but happily chose the spearman. He finished applying his jobs while waiting in line, making sure to keep his status hidden from everyone, even if he couldn’t hide the obvious interaction with his status. He easily changed his jobs over just blindly using his skill as he already knew how to use it. He did have a real close call when he fired off his job change for the last time and felt something give with the use: a feeling of exhaustion and ending, as if he’d run out of any more ability. It occurred when he cast change main job to his new abbot job one last time.
Joe took a bit, once he was settled in the corner, to figure out how many changes to the job he was able to do for both main and sub jobs. He wrestled with it for a bit and his figures came out at about four, maybe five times. He’d changed the three subjobs he’d had yesterday to main jobs to see their stats, then used it this time to change his main job to abbot. That should be four times, if his calculations where correct, although he wasn’t really certain. Although… it is daily, so… maybe the ones yesterday don’t count?
Sub job change had only been used three times, from what he could remember as he’d changed his sub jobs three times today to replace them. But… sub job and extra sub job are different? So I can at least change a few more times? Hmm… He wasn’t certain how many more he had left, but it did look like the skills here were related to a specific number of uses, and not to his mana at all. His mana seemed to take a small hit, dropping by a couple points, but refilled so fast as to be meaningless, in the grand scheme of things. Wonder if mages are the only ones to really use mana?