After finishing off the food and the strange drink, the beer head at the end was almost a foam desert with how sweet it was, I felt a lot more relaxed and ready to try to go over some more information.
“So what do I do from here? I understand the concept a bit, I was meant to be cycled back into the reincarnation cycle as a soul, instead I was brought here to serve as a competitor to earn divinity for Eterna and yourself, then if I earn enough and get enough rewards to hit the peak of A Tier then I can potentially become a demigod and grow through the divinity system instead. But what do I actually do? Like that is all well and good for overarching goals, but like now we have eaten what's the plan? Do I train, sleep, read, what?” Looking over at Ignut hoping this wasn’t pushing things at all, but I had always been one for action and doing things where I could so the info dump without being able to act on much was becoming a pain.
Although the cube food thing was pretty cool, and I was excited to check out the training one as well to find out what weapon type I suited.
“Well there are a few things, the next thing for us to do is check out what weapon type your compatibility is going to be best with then it's going to be time for you to shower and sleep honestly. It's close to the end of the day local time, and as most challenges start in the morning it's best to get into that sleeping cycle early. After that its going to be loading up some training programs, and getting a weapon skill high enough that we can reasonably have you do a challenge, then we can talk about options to move from there. Lets go get the weapon options sorted first, and don’t worry about the bowls, after an hour of not being used they will be absorbed back into the cube.”
Following Ignut I was wondering about what weapon I would end up suitable for, I knew that there were learnable skills and reward skills, with learnable skills being things you could start by yourself like a weapon specialisation or stealth or any other skill possible without direct mana manipulation not including a few exceptions. While reward skills could really be outright magic, throwing fireballs or growing wings or being able to create tools unimaginable to those without the skill to make them. However all skills could grow with effort and time into them, plus some mana as skills grew they consumed both external mana and your internal mana to develop, and even learnable skills could advance at a high enough rank into something that could be considered on par with a reward skill.
It was quite confusing and strange to hear something from Ignut, then suddenly have a range of knowledge buried deep in my mind appear and make itself available like I had always known it. Like when you forget you know something, like how to do multiplication because you never think about it, but when you actively try even if you know when you remember it you can’t actually remember not knowing how to do it.
As we stepped into the training room I walked up to the cube, and looked at Ignut waiting for instruction on what I needed to do.
“Alright, so this time you are going to be asking the cube for a standard assessment of your compatibility with melee weapons and ranged weapons. Those two are only twenty mana each, and will let us narrow down a bit. You have a touch more mana than I was expecting, so we will go about this a bit differently to try to be more exact in finding a good starter weapon option for you.”
Pressing my hand to the side of the cube, I realised I needed to find some good nicknames for these cube guys if I was going to be interacting with them regularly, it was just the human way to adopt and name all strange little objects and appliances. Focusing on the new connection I made the request for the assessment, and got a prompt that this would cost forty mana in total. Giving my approval suddenly I was aware of a presence staring deep into my soul. It felt like I had been torn open and my insides looked over in detail.
Melee compatibility: 71% Ranged compatibility: 94%
After sharing the prompt, and getting a chuckle out of Ignuts about how uncomfortable it had been, apparently they only felt worse as the rank went up and they had to be more invasive to see into your soul's details.
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“Honestly the melee compatibility isn’t bad, I am happy if someone to be trained is over the sixty five percent mark before training, but that ranged compatibility is incredibly high. Your stats aren’t great, being very honest, but this compatibility explains it, as it's almost impossible for someone to have both high stats and a combat talent out of the normal range at the start. So now we need to find out if you're a kinetic weapon or mana weapon user, so same deal but this time you are going to request an assessment for kinetic and mana ranged weapons. This one won’t be as bad as the system has more information on you now for this subject, but expect it to be invasive again once you rank up and it has to start collecting data again.”
Not exactly enthused at the idea of being picked apart by an alien system again just to pick a new weapon, I was at least appreciative if it was going to be less uncomfortable. “Wait, does that mean I already have almost mastered ranged weapons or something? 94% seems really high.”
“I can see why you would think that but no, a hundred isn’t the cap, it's just where base level soul compatibility is limited to. With skills and training it can definitely go up, but it has to start from your base value which gives you a strong advantage to learning skills and weapons related to that option. Now stop delaying and get this next bit done, after this we can call it a day if you want and do the initial skill training tomorrow”
Accepting my fate I put my hand back up against the cube again, and reaching out to the connection with the blue cube I requested the kinetic and mana ranged assessments.Thankfully Ignut hadn’t lied and it was a lot less unpleasant this time, more like something was poking random parts of my body but in a abstract way, almost like it was touching the nerves without touching the flesh around it. Once it was done I was surprised to see the results, as they were heavily tilted in one direction.
Kinetic ranged weapons compatibility: 46.2% Mana ranged weapons compatibility: 94.8%
Sharing these results with Ignut I expected him to be as ecstatic as I felt, but instead he looked like his mechanic had just tripled the estimated bill in the final quote. “What’s wrong with it? Isn’t such a high result exactly what we wanted?”
“Sort of, it's great from a growth point of view, but ranged mana weapons have two problems. One they depend on your mana pool to fire, which means for you until you earn some stat improvements it's going to seriously limit your fire power. Secondly they are expensive. A good sword or staff? Maybe two hundred mana total. A decent bow? Including a self replenishing quiver and materials for it to consume maybe two hundred and fifty mana. A basic mana shot handgun on the other hand is five hundred mana minimum. Its fine, we will still obtain a decent weapon for you, it just means later when you want to upgrade it yourself its going to cost more and Eterna is going to be less likely to consider throwing you bonuses early on as he will want to recoup more on his investment if he has also had to shell out for an expensive weapon.”
Everything Ignut said made sense, it sucked a fair bit, but it made sense. Also though so long as I got some decent rewards it wouldn’t be a problem long term, it just seemed he was trying to be very upfront with me on things.
“No problem, I appreciate the honesty but if this is where my talent lies it would be a waste not to use it just to try to avoid some pains while growing right? If its okay though I would love it if you could show me how the shower works and let me sleep for a bit? This has been a lot.”
“Of course, let's move on, there are also more robes in your room as well. They should fit well, but if you want extra clothes you can purchase them from the sustenance cube, though I don’t recommend wasting the mana now as it's not that cheap and your mana pool isn’t that large. You won’t be charged for the first hundred mana a day spent on food, as that is drawn in from an allowance I manage for this room. Same for training, tomorrow we will find a training program and a set allowance will be created for your daily use. Now shower time, it's simple I promise”
With that we set off for the bathroom, which if the water pressure was decent and the hot water capacity was decent would soon have a chance at becoming my favourite room.