The next morning I wiggle around in my bed, slowly waking up. My body feels sore and my movements are arduous. Well, that’s almost guaranteed if I think back to yesterday. A recipe for muscle aches. Now that I know the consequences if I went back in time…
I take a look at my now actually informative Status Window.
Ok, yeah, I’d probably do the same thing again. Seeing the numbers go up might become an addiction of mine.
Name: Elyssia
Age: 9
Mana: 140/140
+15/hour
Racial Trait:
Celestial Elf
Stats:
Free Points: 18
Might: 7
Mana: 11
Speed: 11
Willpower: 12
Endurance: 8
Intelligence: 11
Dexterity: 11
Focus: 12 (+0)
General Skills:
Savant lvl 1
Identify lvl 4
Running lvl 3
Dodging lvl 4
Pain Tolerance lvl 1
Reflexes lvl 4
Quick Witted lvl 4
Stamina lvl 1
Multitasking lvl 3
I. Class: Crimson’s Blessed - Arcane lvl 3
II. Class: *Locked*
III. Class: *Locked*
Yep, worth it every step of the way. Now that my enthusiasm about General Skills has waned a bit I should look at my attributes a bit more thoroughly.
My class is of the arcane element, which had me wondering why exactly that weirdest of elements got allocated to it. Not that it matters since it's just the starter Class and has barely any influence over my choices when I class up. I'll probably ditch this element for fire or something. My stats are heavier on the mental side, which usually indicates that the individual is more competent in magic and thinking-oriented classes.
I sit up to get some breakfast, my overworked body demanding food to work properly and I comply even if getting out of bed and walking all the way to the kitchen is more cumbersome than usual.
I mutter a weak “Morning” to my parents. They just seem excited to see their daughter and are planning another busy day of imparting their knowledge of the Journey Guide to me.
“Did you sleep well, sweetie? Oh, for sure you did, if someone had to illustrate tiredness you would've been a perfect muse. I’ve made a more nutritious breakfast than usual, your body will need it.” Mom has a big goofy smile on her face, probably just as pumped as me to spend another fruitful day together.
“Come, sit, eat. I’ll sadly be away until late evening, we’ll be heading deeper into the forest for some bigger game. Maybe find some trophies to bring home.” Dad entertains me as I sit down. “Save some strength for when I get home, I also want to play… khm, I mean train with you a little.” He has already finished his breakfast, just sitting there in his leather hunter armor with the bow placed next to the entrance.
I don't need to be told twice and wolf down the contents of the plate in front of me with reckless abandon.
“You know Eli, you probably should have Cooking on the list of necessary skills. It’s not a must-have, just very helpful when you’re away from civilization. Only the central part of the Green Sea is densely populated with actual villages, the monster population in that area is frequently culled so walls are not as crucial. However, towards the north, south and west humans are not the true rulers of the lands and walled towns and cities are where people live. Those can be quite the way from each other, which means you’ll have to make your own meal in the wilderness.”
“Buff, ehh wah heffe aughf sohfs foh hahef mahey sills.” There’s no way I’ll stop eating, hunger and good food equal let me eat in peace.
“I hate how I still understood what you said. Next time chew, swallow and then talk.” Comes the scolding from dad, like. Why even start a conversation when you can see I’m eating, duh? (But, I won’t have enough slots for that many skills)
After nothing is left on my plate and I feel that satisfying heaviness takes over my body I ask the questions that were left out in yesterday's rush.
“Why can I only have nine General Skills and seven skills per Class?”
I know that three is the number that governs most things, so then why?
“Well,” Dad contemplates. “Some smartasses say that your soul can only take so many skills before it gets full. For us, that means seven skills for each class and nine general skills.”
That’s a bit lame. I guess even a bag can only hold so many things.
“Uhum, why exactly that many?”
“Add all the skills you can have together sweetie.” Mom calls out.
“Uhhhm, twenty-four?” I guess. I don’t like numbers.
“Nope.”
“Thirty-nine?” Yeah, this one has three in it and even nine, more likely.
“Okay, okay.” Dad shakes his head. “It's thirty. I wasn't the one who came up with it but looks like the world just loves the number three. Many tried to decipher the origin of this obsession, yet it seems to be a natural thing. Just the way Aelion works.”
“Then why do we only have eight different stat categories?” I ask, because that doesn’t make sense in that case.
“Is it really eight?” Dad wiggles his eyebrows. “What about the latent potential, the Free Points?
Oh, that makes sense, unspent potential is still potential; like most of mine... "What do the different stats actually mean? Like I know Might is quite self-explanatory. Say… what about Endurance and Willpower or Focus?"
“Elyssia, Gods above help me, how many more times do we have to go through this? Every two years you ask this question, this same, exact question. Never remembering a single thing we said.” Mom takes a deep breath and points a finger at me threateningly. “If you don’t pay attention this time, you’ll have to beg us to explain it again.”
And so the lecture starts.
"Free points are just that, points that you can allocate freely. Might shows the actual strength of your body, how hard you can punch, and how much you can lift. It's usually paired with Endurance as it's the toughness of your body, how many punches you can take, what the strongest hit you can survive is and how easily you get tired. A strength-based fighter needs to have plenty of endurance too because if you are really really damn strong while your body can't handle that strength it exerts you can hurt yourself."
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I listen to mom with rapt attention. Most of this isn't foreign to me, but the correlations of different stats might’ve slipped from my mind.
"If you have plenty of Endurance your body gets a more distinct magical presence, this literally means you'll be more difficult to influence with magic. Except for healing spells as that's a natural process inside the body and it welcomes that kind of mana. The next is Speed. It shows not only how fast you can move but also how quickly you can react. The complication here is that when you are too fast you become unable to properly coordinate your body and this is where Dexterity comes into play."
At this point, the water mom put onto the heating stone is already boiled so she makes us some tea before continuing.
“Now, most people would think that Dexterity is for the crafting classes to make their work more precise. Those halfwits are simply wrong. Archers and light weapon users need plenty of dexterity, runners and speed-based combatants also require the stat not to stumble. A really useful attribute that's usually looked down upon." She gets up and starts walking towards the backyard. "I think it'd be best if we continue outside so I can demonstrate the mental properties as I speak."
Soon we're sitting beneath the oak tree, its shadow providing the best spot for a quick nap during the springtime. Sadly now is not the time for that. Magic, magic is on the line.
"Mana is quite self-explanatory; it's the amount of arcane energy your mana vessel can hold. As simple as that.” I raise a finger to ask a glaring question. “Don’t ask what mana is, we don’t know. I know what you were about to ask, I’m your mother, after all, now shut it and let me continue.” It’s both overwhelming and humbling to be outplayed like that, so my mouth closes without uttering a word.
“Willpower is not much more complicated, the will to draw mana into your body, increasing its regeneration. The other slightly less well-known feature of the stat is a kind of mental resolve boost. It means you are more persistent and mentally more stable. A key aspect of any self-respecting mage.”
So it's a stat for being stubborn? No wonder I’m stacked up with it.
“Intelligence, despite its name, does not make the user smarter. It just helps process information faster and gives us the ability to move more mana at the same time, resulting in greater spells.”
Now this is what I’m talking about, huge booms, sky-high fires, earth-splitting lightning bolts. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some crazy arsonist, these things just sound cool. And cool things are rarely wrong.
Mom creates a small ice shard. “Let's say, I can put twenty points of mana into this spell because my Intelligence is twenty. It's not a pinpoint accurate rate, still fairly close. Some things like affinity and passive skills can influence this value.” Now the ice shard begins to stretch out, getting thinner and thinner. “Focus is my favorite, it increases the amount of mana you can control and your fine control over it. What I mean here, is both the size of the circle around you in which you can manipulate your mana and the intricacy of your spells increases with it in tandem. Let’s say you have plenty of Intelligence and next to nothing in terms of Focus. You use a huge amount of mana at once and the spell is going to be a mess. It’ll still form no problem, except the accuracy and the effects are gonna plummet. For spells like a flamespitter that’s fine. On the other hand, a fire whip would dissipate in seconds." As she finishes she tries stretching the ice shard further.
It’s approaching the width of my pinky finger when it cracks and shatters.
“So for a mage such as your future self Mana is a basic necessity, besides that you’ll have to find out whether you want to focus on output or control.” She pauses here.” Maybe both, however, most elements don't support that.”
“That was a lot, not gonna lie. I think I get the gist of it though. Mana, Willpower Intelligence and Focus. These are the bread and butter of mages.” Then I think of mom’s fighting style. “Wait. Then what happens if someone gets close to me or can land hit on me? I’ll die in seconds, no?”
“A very solid question. In that situation, you have two, maybe three options. Let’s say you’re in a fight with teammates and they fail to defend you or you’re alone and about to get hit. Blocking with magic seems to be the obvious choice. Making a shield and hiding behind it like a barefoot mage, although I think that’s not what you’re curious about. The other two options are either you have enough Speed to dodge the attack or enough Endurance to survive it. That’s why even as a mage you can’t entirely neglect those stats.”
“Won’t investing in either of the two mean I miss out on the mental ones?”
“Oh sure it does.” She says with a goofy nod and stands up.”But it's still a more preferable option than dying, sweetie. Now, we’ll discuss which element you favor, after you’ve trained some of those skills of yours. So, move those legs, the laps await.” I don’t like her smile as she says that. And where did my rest days go?
***
Working on my general skills becomes boring the same day. Seeing small blue windows pop up and tell me I can now run a little better loses its charm pretty fast.
I still do it, not because of the skills themselves but the upcoming class up. I can’t wait to have actual stuff and do some real magic.
Oh, and something helped me decide on an element. A gamble on my part to be precise.
One of mom’s friends, or colleagues or whatever, ran into us the other day. He’s a mage from the capital and knows a buttload about mana. He told me in simple child terms what he learned in school about magic theory, the nature of mana. Wielding magic comes down to three things. The elements of the class, the amount of stats to wield said element and lastly visualization. If you don’t know what and can’t imagine the results the outcome will be poor. On the other hand, if the image and knowledge behind the element is top-notch, the efficiency shoots up. Hotter flames, more shocking lighting and more efficient mana consumption.
Some elements like Water and Earth were simple and some, like Time, were beyond complicated. Savant handed me a different description and still it was worth listening to other viewpoints. How scholars here think the world works.
This little lesson of his presented me with an unexpected pop-up.
[The general Skill [Savant] has reached lvl 2.]
Not to sound too unenthusiastic or anything but... That’s it? This was all I needed to do? Just learn something about mana and… poof, my broken skill gets a level up? Dude, these aren’t even foreign ideas to me, the knowledge of Earth, I still think it is a stupid name, had similar theories in it.
And not just learning about magic, seeing street performers do some dope tricks had a similar effect. Even just pondering about different applications with my knowledge helped too. All of these mundane things made Savant climb levels faster than any of my skills.
Speaking of other skills, the rest did pretty well too. I mean it’s the first few levels, it would be disgusting if it took me weeks with the effort I’m putting into it.
In two days I reached level 9 and got my skills to an acceptable level. I won’t spend a minute more grinding Stamina just to get it to max level before classing up, no way, not as an upcoming mage.
“How should I distribute the free points?” I ask first thing after breakfast.
“You should have… fifty-four, right?” Dad asks, to which I nod after a quick check. “Bring every magic stat to twenty-first.”
I enthusiastically comply. It was almost cruel when they told me to leave the stat points be until I reach level nine. My mind was twitching to see those points spent. Numbers go up!
I arrange my stats with a simple thought, almost like telling my System ‘Put nine here, good boy’.
“I still have twenty, where should I put those? Some physical-?”
“Don’t!” Mom interrupts “I know I said those are important, I know. It’s just the system loves stats rounded to tens and makes it a requirement for certain class-up options almost every time. Put the rest into…”
This prompts a quick debate between my parents about what my stats should look like. They always told me that I’m free to choose and it's my future yet here we are.
In the end, they know better and between my indecisiveness and their enthusiasm, I’m willing to be indulgent this time. After some back and forth with me growing restless by the minute the verdict is made.
“Having this many free points at your level is not the norm, so consider yourself lucky young lady.” I do, mom. “Willpower and Focus.” She declares.
So be it. A few points are nothing to argue about on the grand scale of stat points.
Name: Elyssia
Age: 9
Mana: 200/200
+30/hour
Racial Trait:
Celestial Elf
Stats:
Free Points: 0
Might: 7
Mana: 20
Speed: 11
Willpower: 30
Endurance: 8
Intelligence: 20
Dexterity: 11
Focus: 30(+0.8)
General Skills:
Savant lvl 9
Identify lvl 4
Running lvl 7
Dodging lvl 7
Pain Tolerance lvl 1
Reflexes lvl 5
Quick Witted lvl 8
Stamina lvl 6
Multitasking lvl 6
I. Class: Crimson’s Blessed - Arcane lvl 9
II. Class: *Locked*
III. Class: *Locked*
I’m not sure to be proud or sad that the numbers are this low. I know it’s just the start… even so, single-digit things seem mighty weak.
Also, the fact that all my mental stats became round tens after spending the Free Points on them must be some divine luck. I’m not so sure it's gonna be helpful, but it still looks nice.
“Have you decided on an element, Eli?” Dad asks the big question.
“I did.”
He tilts his head and raises an eyebrow expecting a proper answer.
“I’ll leave that to be a surprise.” I say cheekily.
“Fine.” he huffs. “Eli, when you get to select the class, take your time, examine your options carefully and most importantly listen to your inner voice. Choose what you feel suits you the best.” Comes the word of advice from dad.
“Don’t stress about it too much. If the chosen class is not to your liking it's not the end of the world. Yes, it’ll take time to reset and get back to level nine again but you’re young and many, many more years are in front of you.” Mom encourages me.
“Ok, thanks. Phew no pressure, huh?” I giggle and pull up that glorious notification that I dismissed in order to get Savant to level nine first.
I won’t lie, it was a real challenge holding myself back.
I lay down on my bed as this process will make me unconscious and it wouldn’t be fun to pass out while standing.
[Your class [Crimson’s Blessed - Arcane] has reached lvl 9. Class advancement is now available, would you like to start the class evolution?]
[Y/N]