Aurora closed her eyes for a few short moments as she floated around in the black nothingness that surrounded her, taking a few moments to clear her head before she moved on to updating her status menu.
The last twenty minutes had been hectic, between sneaking into the gnoll camp, fighting to the death, and then having to forward her countermeasures for the future gnoll raids because she had potentially caused them to rampage by killing their chief without realising.
She needed some time to centre herself and get her thoughts straight. With everything that had occurred, her mind was still working overtime as it jumped from one thought to the next working to anticipate and counter any threats to her. Being in such a high state of alert for long periods became mentally draining, while also impacting her physical fatigue since her muscles were still tense and ready to react at a moment's notice.
Sadly it had taken her a long time to realise and address the problem, all thanks to a chance encounter with a Shaolin Monk whom she had crossed paths with in one of the Empire’s Capital city training arenas. The encounter had been both informative and helpful as she had left with a couple of meditation techniques that the Monk had taught, one helping her to maintain a stable and analytical mental state while fighting and the other to centre herself after the fight.
While effective, she had found that they had not been very useful over the last few days, this fact was clearly shown by how she handled her first encounter with the goblins of Woodspike Forrest. She had initially assumed this was in part due to how unstable she was after her encounter with Fortuna had thrown her reality into a spiral, however, she now realised that was not completely the case.
She was now in a space void of anything but her own thoughts to distract her, and as she attempted to clear her mind, she only now realised just how many different things were passing through. Compared to when she was a man, her thoughts were somewhat like a hyperactive child, jumping from one thing to another with seemingly no consistency.
At one moment she was thinking about all the possible actions the gnolls could take following her attack, the next she was thinking about how Marie was getting on with her potions, followed by the idea that she should request Harold to order a selection of cakes for her to try.
Granted, in the past thanks to her level and high number in stats she had been able to think faster than she had now, but when compared to her previous thought process, everything seemed… erratic.
Aurora found she spent less time thinking about something and reaching a conclusion she was happy with, only for the finished thought to be replaced by something either related, or completely random.
She initially thought that it might be due to her new body, but after thinking back to her interactions with other women like Marie, Roxanne and even her ex, Lilly, she realised that conversations sometimes followed the erraticness that her mind now seemed to follow.
As this thought crossed her mind, a brief flash of an angry expression crossed her face as she immediately thought that the gods had messed with her mind, but upon further reflection, she realised that she was now in a female body, so a female mind was part of the package.
Letting that thought linger for a moment, she decided that in the end, the only thing that it seemed to have had an impact on was her ability to clear her mind. While it may impact some of her future decisions, it was something she was now conscious of and could monitor.
With her sudden realisation now concluded, Aurora returned to trying to clear her mind. Sadly, after five minutes of trying she only had some mild success as random thoughts kept on coming out of nowhere and distracting her. She had managed to slightly calm her mind and ease the tension out of her body, however, any further attempts seemed to be futile.
She knew she needed further practice now that her mind had slightly changed, and a stray thought brought the idea of trying to meet with the Shaolin monk once again for some advice.
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After putting the new idea into her mental ‘to-do’ list, Aurora reopened her eyes and navigated to her status page in the menus. The first thing that popped up was her level, 35. Just seeing the number brought a smile to her face. In just a couple of hours, she had saved herself a whole day's worth of grinding, and while she would likely level up a few more times between when she respawned and when she logged off as she continued to attack the gnolls, the fact remained that her brief excursion back into the mountains had been worth her time.
It would not be too long till her time changed from hardcore levelling up to socialising, politics and running a guild, so every bit of progress she made now would take the pressure off later on.
The next thing that caught her attention was the meagre among of skill points she had, a total of 17. She had spent 20 mid-fight with the gnolls to acquire [Fire Pillar], leaving her with too few to be able to purchase anything she wanted. Granted, she could purchase an intermediate skill like [Earth Shield], but skills like that were at a lower priority with her limited number of skill points.
Of course, this could be easily remedied later on, but she wanted to be able to use the interesting skills that became available at Lv 35 like [Minor Heal], a skill that while only able to heal minor injuries, would help reduce the pain and prevent her and others movement focus from being restricted as much by those wounds.
Moving down the page she was pleased with the growth of her stats, even if they looked particularly low from what she was used to. She decided to apply the 57 attribute points she had gained from levelling up and the few common titles to her INT and WIS respectively, with more of an emphasis on WIS to make sure the magic she would be throwing at the gnolls would hit much harder.
As she continued to inspect her status page she spotted her karma which now sat at 56,849 and let out a slight laugh. Despite how hard she had tried not to be the aggressor, she had still attacked the arrogant player who came to speak to her first. But for her to have dropped from 100,000 by so much meant that the system must have registered some of her attacks on Iron Fist’s squad of goons as initiating combat.
Irrespective of what happened, she would regain her karma value as she killed the mindless monsters so it was not something she would have to worry about, especially given the fact it would be a while until she encountered other players, let alone those who would be hostile to her.
Aurora then gave her skills a cursory glance, the only change being the addition of her new [Fire Pillar] skill, and down to her unique titles. Compared to the past, her current list was a mere twentieth of the number she had before, however, the quality of the titles she did have was vastly different. After all, she had 7 first-time titles, and she was very far ahead of most players at the moment.
Happy with the minor changes she had made to her status, Aurora gave it one last cursory glance before closing the status page.
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[Astaria]
Class: Mage - Lv: 35 – 41% [+11]
Race: ???
Gender: Female
Age: 20
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HP: 1300/1300
MP: 1830/1830
Fatigue: 76%
Hunger: 25%
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Skill Points: 17/477 - 97% [+15/-20]
Attribute Points: 0 [+57/-57]
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[Attributes]
VIT: 130 [+27]
STA: 58 [+27]
DEF: 55 (+9) [+27]
STR: 65 [+27]
AGI: 75 (+40) [+27]
DEX: 55 [+27]
INT: 117 (+66) [+44]
WIS: 173 (+54) [+67]
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[Equipment]
Enchanted Mastercraft Steel Staff [Rare+]
(34 ATK) (WIS+10, INT+10)
Receptivity - Vigilance of the Witch Queen [Legendary+]
(182 ATK) (INT+37, WIS +34, AGI+32) (Sharpness+) (Magical Infusion)
Frilled Blouse [Rare]
(WIS+4, INT+3)
Sogorim Mithril Bracers [Epic]
(DEF+8, WIS+6, INT+6, -2% Cast Time)
Skinny Leather Trousers [Rare]
(AGI+4, INT+3)
Steel Plated Leather Boots [Rare]
(INT+5, AGI+4)
Black Hooded Ornate Robe [Rare]
(INT +2) (DEF +1)
——————————
[Resistances]
(+ To Expand)
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Charisma: 10
Luck: 550
——————————
Karma: 56,849
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[Skills]
Staff Lv 2
Short-sword Lv 2
Mana Arrow Lv 2
Fireball Lv 3
--- Blast Lv1
Lightning Lv 4
--- Residual Burst Lv 2
Earth spike Lv 4
Freeze Lv 3
--- Lingering Frost Lv1
Fire Pillar Lv 1 [+1]
Frozen Burst Lv 1
Chain Lightning Lv 1
Mana Barrier Lv 1
Teleport Lv 1
Evasion lv 4
Mana Heart Lv 2
Casting Lv 3
Vitality Boost Lv 3
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[Fame and Contribution]
Personal Fame: 60 [+44]
The Temple: 1220 [+890]
Adventurers Guild: 1370 [+990]
Alennos Kingdom: 45 [+34]
——————————
[Titles]
-First Epic Acquirer-
-First Legendary Acquirer-
-Raids Harbinger-
-Raid Pioneer-
-Slayer of Square Jaw-
-Stalwart Warrior-
-The First Immortal Warrior-
[Common Titles]
(+ To Expand)
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