As Caleb came down the steps he realized his room was in what appeared to be a barroom. Taking the last step he saw Valikra and decided to head over to her. " Thank you Valikra, the test for my profession was significantly harder than i had initially believed. If it wasn't for you I guess that I would have woken up inside a back alley if I didn't awake in a jail cell."
"No problem my liege, it was simply my duty. I saw your new familiar and I am sorry for you poor luck in companion." Valikra said while sending Caleb a smile.
"What do you mean by my poor luck?" Caleb inquired, with annoyance seeping into his voice. Lidah was more than just some pet she was a part of him their very souls being bond. He refused to allow anyone to insult or demean her.
"I mean no insult Caleb. I am sure she has redeeming qualities. But the simple fact is it takes a century for a winged-tiger to grow powerful enough to be a valid battle mount. Worse she is a elemental mutant meaning she has a penalty on physical stats yet because she is both a beast she has a penalty to her mind stats. As a tiger she will have less mana than say a fox or cat. In the end she will be decent in most things yet excellent in none meaning when you merge you will receive hardly any benefit. The best she can offer you is an increase in elemental affinity and if you are extremely lucky a certain extra level of lightning resistance. She will be a great fighter on her own due to her mutation yet it makes her a worse familiar." Valikra tried to explain. She had realized through her own connection with Caleb, that the tiger cub was his soul familiar rather than just a regular beast companion or basic familiar. But that didn't change the purpose of a familiar and as a familiar the tiger cub was a very poor choice.
"Ah. Okay I can understand what you mean. But by the fact that she would be powerful on her own she could still fight beside me even if we will seldom if ever use our merge ability. " Caleb said. While he was still somewhat upset about losing what had at first seemed a powerful ability he was happy that Lidah would be powerful and able to hunt on her own. especially since at least for the most pert he planned on hunting and fighting by himself.
"You are right her build will in a lot of ways resemble yours. So if she trains to fully meld her physical and magic she could become significantly more powerful than those who focus on a single route. But if she cannot gain the skill and competence to meld them she will be lucky to have half the power of those of the same level" Valikra replied with a nod. Yet before Caleb could respond a new system prompt came.
REGIONAL QUEST GENERATED
The human city, Haven will come under attack by a beast wave in 18 hours.
If you are in the city at that time you will have to participate in the defense of the city.
If you want to join Haven in its defense you can pay a thousand credits to be transferred to Haven from any city magistrate office.
You can choose to join as military or militia.
Quest rewards dependant of level of success and personal contribution.
Military: Fight from the walls with trained defenders greatly lowering danger. Strict rules and regulations receive 25% less XP
ACCEPT
Y/N
Militia: Fight by yourself our in small parties under 10. No harming others for the duration of the beast assault and no deserting.
ACCEPT
Y/N
Caleb decided to do the quest immediately after seeing it. He was already planning on working for levels and this was the perfect way to do so. "Valikra would you care to join me during the quest we were just offered. I'm am planning to join as part of the militia as I am mainly planning to participate for the leveling." Caleb already had more than 9 million credits so saw zero reason to worry about other rewards.
"Okay. It would be good to learn how to fight together seeing as I am you general." Valikra said almost as soon as Caleb finished asking her.
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"Ah. speaking of that. It mentions followers how do you get those." Caleb asked, just now realizing he had never bothered figuring it out.
"I can only get followers once we leave the Tutorial and you claim a Place of Power. After you have a Place of Power we can use use its mana to summon minions who are non sapient yet the best at evolution. These followers are basic imps, kobolds, goblins, fairies, and volucrim. Each of these races can gain sapience pretty easily with good training and have thousands of evolutionary paths. They do not evolve like the sapient races instead they can be forcefully evolved by mana. There are versions of these races which are considered full races and born with sapience. Succubuses, hobgoblins, altior kobolds, angels, talikron are an example of fully sapient subraces of these basic races. Anyways if you are a noble you get a certain number of control points allowing you to summon these creatures, the higher your nobility the more you can summon. Being a general gives me control points that scale of my wisdom, being a simple equation of wisdom plus intelligence divided by 10, taking one control point per evolutionary stage a creature is at. Thing is none of these creatures is really that useful till stage 3 even if they gain sapience. As the liege of generals you will have the same number of control points as all of your generals combined." Valikra explained. She was beginning to understand why his god wanted her to help him so much. He had pretty good power and insane potential but he new nothing of the system even less than most of the other humans she had met since their Cradle joined the multiverse.
"Okay, so I understand mudst of that as it seemed pretty straight forward. I do need to ask a few questions though. How do you get a nobility title? How are their control points determined? What are volucrim and talikron?" Caleb asked after a few minutes trying to order his thoughts.
"Becoming a noble is both simple and yet vague, the simple way is to kill a noble as you will gain a nobility rank one level lower. The more vague way is to impress the system possibly as a reward for a quest or recieve it from a higher ranking nobel. A volucrim is a four foot tall ant-man creature more heavily resembling an ant. A talikron is a high evolutionary stage for the volucrim, they look like stone skinned humans with 4 arms and three eyes. The talikron are one of the top 1000 races in the multiverse. To put that in perspective for your original sub-race of human is ranked 9,418,902nd while phaltor vampires are ranked 981,089th. Now just because a rank is low is not all that important as it bases it of the average for that sub-race. Our sector has 309 trillion+ registered subraces. So all in all having a race in the top ten million is still pretty impressive."Valikra said trying to help him fully understand the importance.
"My final question then is: How loyal are the creatures we summon/create?" Caleb asked.
"The more simple minded the more loyal by default. The higher your willpower stat the more loyal you creatures will be and the better you treat them the more loyal they will be. To them you are their god, ergo make them fear respect and appreciate you and no matter how powerful they become they will most likely stay loyal." Valikra answered.
"Well that's all I really wanted to know for now, so lets go and stock up before heading to the city magistrate's office." Caleb said
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Caleb stood inside a forge trying to explain to the master smith the design he wanted to make his weapons. According to the smith it would "only take 2 hours to craft the custom weapons as they were for such a weak person". Caleb tried to not be offended as he was actually quite happy to receive the gear. He also had the enchantment One Size Fits All (HUMANOID) put on all his other gear. Hear had chosen to have most of his weapons replaced so they were better for his fighting style.
Roughly two hours later caleb held the three finished blades. A longsword, a shortsword, and a dagger. Both swords had a silverish blade with dark crimson and violet runes scrolled down their length, an s-guard to protect his fingers and a sold black hilt. The dagger instead had a pitch black blade with thin silver runeword. All three weapons had a blue sapphire gem as the pommel , the swords each holding 500 MP while the dagger held 100. The metal for the blades was an alloy created from mana iron, agaterium, elementium, and a single ounce of mithril. The elementium and mithril raised the price to a steep 5 mil. yet they gave him the ability to wield the swords until mid or even late D-rank and hopefully he could find or raise a crafter good enough to make him new gear by the time he needed it. Either that or he'd need to depend on the mercurial luck of loot. Each blade came with a black sheath made from rockrhino hide.
He strapped the shortsword to his right hip and the longsword to his left. The dagger he strapped to the back of his belt so it rested in the small of his back with the handle pointed to his right. The swords had each had two points they were secured at making them hang at an angle on his hip so that the blades neither dragged on the ground nor entanged his feet. He could have worn them on his back but while that might look cool it was a stupid way to carry a blade unless you absolutely had to, the blade would wind-up stuck with you jumping around like a fool if you tried to draw from over your shoulder so instead you needed to remove the sheath draw the sword and throw the sheath away before a fight began. Now with his gear all situated he thanked the smith and headed to the magistrates office.
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Maddy stood with the 7 friends she had made during the Tutorial. They were waiting inside the magistrates office for their turn to use the teleportation formation. She was excited to see Caleb again and she knew he wouldn't be able to resist the challenge of this quest. Caleb was in certain ways both a brother and a father figure for her so she really wanted to see how he was doing. Turning she looked a the tall whipcord thin man next to her and blushed. She was hoping to get Caleb's blessing in Marcus. She had always been very traditional about marriage and since her father had passed a few years ago only Caleb could give the blessing.
Out of the seven of them 6 were draugr the 7th being a red haired girl named Bethany, though she went by Beth to her friends, was an orc having fallen in love with their brutal fighting style and their tribal culture.Everyone had been humans originally except Marcus who was born as a draugr. He was the main reason that Maddy was still alive as he was a trained warrior of his people.
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Grace stood in front of her two brothers as they waited their turn to use the teleporter. They had all chosen the giant race and a unique monk class. Grace would have normally been considered by most to be pretty, tall long black hair emerald eyes that could pierce your soul. Yet she had scaring from a broken noise she got when a man had tried to rape her. The man got killed as she was well trained in boxing and krav maga by her farther. Unfortunately his father's goons tried to come and finish her the next day outside her dads gym. Thankfully her two brothers were able to help, the fucked up thing was that all three of them got sentenced to prison for killing the goons, though no one could prove shit about the first guy since her old man had had time to clean up the scene.
Yet in this new world it didn't matter. If anyone tried to hurt her or her family she could kill them with zero worry for some bullshit laws. This quest would help provide her family with the strength they needed.