Taking a deep breath and standing up straight, I re-equipped my bow and quiver and looked around. The cliff wasn’t all that daunting, only twelve feet or so, but I was disinclined to deal with it again so soon. Crossing the stream was the other option. While there was no apparent bridge, the water flowed slowly. Getting closer showed it to be shallow and not all that wide. It was further than I could jump, but wading across wouldn’t be a problem even if I couldn’t find stepping stones.
“Hey! Before you go hunting monsters, there’s something else you should know how to do.”
It’s always hard to raise an eyebrow at someone standing on one’s shoulder (not that I ever had the opportunity before, but then … who has?), but I did my best. “Oh?”
“Yep! Hey! You should learn how to use Inspect. Whether it is monsters, other Travellers, or residents of Elemental Chrysanthemum Homeland Online, Inspect can give you basic information that might be helpful. Hey! Go ahead and try and Inspect me; you’ll see what it looks like when you use the ability on residents.”
A little uncertain on how to do so as Sunrise Sparkle hadn’t mentioned how to use the ability, I focused my attention on her and thought “Inspect” to myself. It took a couple tries, and a certain mental intonation, but it worked:
Sunrise Sparkle
Level 5 Elionne (Elemental Fae Archetype)
Class: None / Profession: Tutorial Experience And Starting Expert
Friendly
There was yet again another flickering notification box in the corner of my vision, but I didn’t get a chance to examine it because the faerie was again speaking.
“Hey! You can see that you can learn names, levels, races, classes, professions, and reputation with Inspect. That can be useful, but try it again and you’ll see what you can see if I was a monster.”
Elionne (Lv 5)
Health: 100%
Mana: 100%
Neutral
“Hey! Most monsters aren’t named, so you’ll just get information about the type of monster they are such as ‘Large Rat,’ ‘Skeleton Guard,’ or ‘Slime Queen.’ You can see the percentage of health and mana they have, which is useful in a fight, and even see whether the monster is friendly, neutral, or hostile. It’s not just monsters, though. Animals and hostile residents will display pretty much the same way. Hey! Do it once more and you can see what it would be like if I were a Traveller like you.”
Sunrise Sparkle, New Accounts Virtual Instructor
Level 5 Elionne (Elemental Fae Archetype)
Class: Traveller / Profession: Tutorial Experience And Starting Expert
Health: 100% / Mana: 100%
Primary Skills: Aerobatics, Elemental Magic, Lore, Spellcasting, Threat Mitigation
“Hey! When you Inspect a fellow Traveller, you get a lot more information. Like a monster, you get their health and mana, which can be useful if you’re working together, and you also learn their class and profession like a resident. You can also see their active title, the one they want you to know about. Additionally, you can see what skills they have learned, but secondary skills remain hidden.”
“Um, so if someone were to Inspect me—?”
“Hey! Try it on yourself and see!”
Madelyn Alexis
Level 1 Tauros (Beastkin Archetype)
Class: Traveller / Profession: None
Health: 100% / Mana: 100%
Primary Skills: Archery, Stealth,
At least people that inspect me won’t see that I’m a Heroine, but my skills … no, won’t they get the wrong impression if they see I’ve learned Stealth? “Hey?” (Great, I was starting to pick up her speech habits) “Is there a way to hide my skills from inspection? Or maybe is there a way that I can move skills between primary and secondary?”
“Yeppers! In the tutorial instance, you can freely move skills around. And out in the full world of Elemental Chrysanthemum Homeland Online, you can always promote a secondary skill to a primary skill if you have an open primary skill slot, but you cannot move primary skills to secondary skills except by forgetting the skill and relearning it. That’s usually not a good idea! Hiding skills is harder. You cannot do that yet; it requires a skill that has prerequisites and then it will show as ‘Veiled skill,’ I think—I don’t know as much about skills you cannot get in the tutorial. If you think having ‘Stealth’ show up might be suspicious, I think it would be much worse in others’ eyes to have your skills Veiled.”
Hmm. She had a point and I had a problem. From my earlier reading, it was apparent that a player’s primary skills were of, well, prime importance. They’re the skills that the player is using or plans to use the most, and they’re the skills that determine if a character levels up or gets stronger from having the skills level and affect the base attributes.
I planned to use a fair bit of Stealth, especially when by myself, since it would—in theory—let me bypass encounters I couldn’t otherwise deal with, and attacking from stealth almost always was a surprise attack that did bonus damage in other games. It probably would be the same here, too. It also had the benefit of raising Agility and Willpower, both very important stat— ah, attributes for what I thought my playstyle was going to be. Well, I wasn’t so much interested in Willpower for the mana but rather for the pain tolerance. However, with a starting spell and maybe more later, mana could become important. And if the abilities that skills granted used mana, then Willpower would be important for everyone, not just spellcasters.
But I also didn’t want everyone to see that I had the Stealth skill just by doing a casual Inspect on me. Whether NPCs would judge me or not was one thing, but other players certainly would. If I ended up with a regular party that I travelled, explored, and fought with, I wouldn’t mind letting them know I could Stealth and I wouldn’t mind using it in support of friends. But a pick-up group of random strangers … I didn’t think I’d want to be shoehorned into the rogue role every time. After all, I’m going with Archery primary and not Dagger.
But if I moved Stealth to a secondary skill, not only would it level slower, but it would also fill up the last of my starting slots for secondary skills. And there wasn’t anything else that I had taken that I thought I’d be doing enough to make a primary skill. Dagger was to fall back upon, as was Dodge. Those were for close-quarters combat, which was something I was going to try and avoid having to do too much. I took them because there wasn’t any way to guarantee never needing a backup plan.
That left … Gathering.
The more I thought about it, the better it seemed. Crafting skills were usually always in high demand but unless it was a game where everyone could do everything, there never was enough supply to meet the demand. And that tends to go doubly so for the collection skills that feed into them. Gathering looked to be important for Cooking, which was something I was interested in possibly pursuing. Being that food and drink are consumables, but not usually very glamorous, the crafted supply might not meet the demand.
Plus, Gathering would raise Brilliance as its main focus, and since Brilliance should affect the spell that being a Heroine got me as well as contribute to increasing secondary skill slots, I would need at least one Brilliance-raising skill slotted to a primary skill. So, without dwelling on it too much longer, I swapped the places of Stealth and Gathering.
Brandishing my bow, I smirked as a stray thought crossed my more-than-slightly sleepy mind. Archery and Gathering—I was well on my way to becoming a primitive tribesman, or, well, tribeswoman. An actual hunter-gatherer. Maybe I should see about getting a leopard-skin bikini….
Okay, not that last bit.
Hopefully, armor in this gameworld isn’t quite as revealing as it tends to be in standard non-virtual games, but if it is … I guess I’ll just have to deal with it when that time comes. If I do get an animal-skin bikini, I can always wear a dress, uh, robe over it. Besides, it’s a little late for me to be fretting over swimwear when I’m a pint-sized flying mermaid for my hivatar.
Stifling a yawn, I thought a moment more about skills, considering taking Cooking to go with my Gathering, but decided to postpone that for later. Being concerned about how others saw my skillset meant more than just putting Stealth where it can’t be seen—someone with predominantly crafting skills for their primary skills might have problems even getting into a pick-up group, so Cooking would have to come later. It could be a secondary skill when Brilliance unlocks another or maybe an additional primary skill after I’ve played and developed enough to unlock another. For now, I’ll wait and see; perhaps the system will prompt me for a skill based on my actions.
Speaking of which—what was that notification box that popped up earlier?
Do you wish to learn the skill Appraisal (L/B)? [Learn as Primary. (2 open slots)] [Learn as Secondary. (1 open slot)] [Do not learn.]
Hmm.
Appraisal: Based on and raises Luck and Brilliance, the Appraisal skill allows you to learn more information when Inspecting a target. Initially, the skill provides no additional information, but new categories (such as attributes, secondary skills, abilities, traits, or weaknesses) can be added every 10 skill levels. Contrast with the Identification skill which grants more information when Inspecting items and equipment.
An enhanced version of Inspect? Not now…. Sure, it sounds potentially very useful, but a skill like that is something that only one person in a group really needs. It’s something I might like, but Identification sounds more useful for my future in crafting. It was also not something that would be useful in the tutorial, since it seemed unlikely for anyone to level any skill up that high before getting out to the main gameworld. Thus, it was something I could wait on and see if anyone in my future group wanted or needed it more. Furthermore, Luck wasn’t exactly a high priority attribute for me to invest into.
Granted, that was definitely counting my chickens before the eggs are even laid, much less hatching. In order to have a future group, I will have to have future friends, and our play schedules and interests will have to mesh with each others: not always an easy task, though made somewhat easier by the relatively few commitments I had out in the real world.
We’ll see what the future holds when the future arrives. The present, however, strongly suggested that I cross the little stream and hunt for some monsters to practice my skills upon; then, finish the tutorial and go to bed. Does sleeping in VR count for sleeping in the real world? If I didn’t get a move on, I might get a chance to find out.
Just a bit upstream, past the rivulet where the fountain flowed into the stream, the water appeared shallower. Wider, but less than a foot deep compared to right here near the arena where the water looked to be approximately knee-high on my short avatar.
Making my way upstream, I watched little, silvery fish dart back and forth. I stopped twice when I noticed the telltale glow of the skill guide highlighting plants along the waterside. The first was a stand of rushes that looked like cattails, but pale sky blue instead of the characteristic grey over brown. The skill guide had me digging the rushes up by their roots and collecting the whole thing from root to fluffy spike. Once harvested, they were shown to be “Mountain Blue Typha” in my inventory. I took a moment to rinse off the mud in the water. The second plant was a bush growing close to the water’s edge, but not upon it. It was about waist-high and covered with small waxy leaves that hid wickedly long thorns beneath the canopy of green. At the base of many of the thorns were clusters of four or five small, red berries that looked like a cross between a blueberry in shape and a strawberry in color and texture. When I looked at them in my inventory, their status screen was interesting:
Sweet Redberry [Consumable] [Ingredient] Restores 1 health per 5 berries. “It takes the toughest of hides or nimblest of fingers—preferably both—to brave the thorns and collect the Sweet Redberry. Most people don’t bother. By the time a bush is harvested, the harvester has usually consumed half or more of the harvest, soothing and repairing wounds acquired in the process.”—J.A. Kjeldon, Royal Alchemist and Scribe
I could believe it. Those thorns were sharp and getting poked or scraped by one hurt just as much here in virtual reality as similar thorns would have in the real world. That didn’t bode well for damage suffered in combat. Sucking on a stabbed finger, I contemplated trying to gather more of the berries, but decided that it would take too long to carefully harvest the bush in full and settled on collecting only the berries that were blocked by one or two thorns and not those deeper in the maze of branch and thorn.
I still ended up with my health bar significantly depleted, by an eighth or so, before I finished gathering what I was willing to attempt. It gave me a healthy respect for the bush. If someone tripped and fell and got entangled in the bush, all the various pricks and stabs and scrapes the thorns would inflict, first in the fall and then in trying to get free, could potentially wound the person to death. I wondered if there was maybe a health threshold below which a person couldn’t fall if only suffering minor wounds, but I certainly wasn’t willing to experiment upon myself. However, I did try to break off a thorn or two—they might have a use for a weapon crafter—but the thorns resisted my attempts to bend or snap them.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
In contrast to the Sweet Redberry, the Mountain Blue Typha’s item screen was virtually (hah!) non-existent:
Mountain Blue Typha [Unrefined]
No flavor text and not even listed as an ingredient. I knew that cattails, at least part of them, were an important food source for early peoples and that the dried rushes could probably be used to make baskets from, but the specifics of the whats and hows I didn’t know. With no immediate clue, the manner in which this plant was refined and used will have to be learned later, I guess.
Throughout most of the short walk and not-so-short gathering, Sunrise Sparkle remained on my shoulder, though she flitted off when I was braving the thorns for the berries. Understandably so. After all, I thought the thorns were big; they must have been absolutely humongous to someone only a few inches tall. That would have been like me finding a tree with thorns the size of greatswords upon it.
But when I got to wider, shallower spot of the stream, slipped off my slipper-like shoes, and dipped a toe in to feel the temperature, I asked her to fly on across ahead of me. That way if I slipped on the shiny, polished stones making up this part of the bed, she’d be safe. But more immediately, I squatted down and took a double handful of the very cold water and splashed it across my face. It was brisk enough to help keep me awake and maybe keep the yawns at bay.
On the other side of the stream, the wildflowers gave way to grasses and bushes. The grass was about calf-high overall, but patches here and there, looking more like grains, grew taller than I was now. Scattered about were a few taller trees, deciduous, and just getting into their spring growth. That Sweet Redberry bush must have been a very determined plant to have produced berries while everything else was only budding.
Now it was just a matter of finding the monsters, but as I was thinking that, Sunrise Sparkle took at an oblique angle. Shortly thereafter, she yelled, “Hey! Over here!” By the time she called out, she was far enough away that her diminutive figure was hard to see. However, letting my vision follow her line of flight, I saw what I thought she was getting at. There was a patch where the grass was disturbed, and moving out of time with the surrounding swaying caused by the breeze. I caught a glimpse of light brown fur, enough to allow me to Inspect what the faerie had found.
Mountain Meadow Rat (Lv 1)
Health: 100%
Mana: 100%
Neutral
A rat. A large rat even, though not man-sized like in The Princess Bride. Typical monsters for new players to fight in games throughout the ages, but at least I wasn’t having to traipse through sewer tunnels beneath a city to get to them.
Raising my bow, I pulled an arrow from my quiver and nocked it. But I didn’t yet draw it back. From me to the rat was a bit beyond the range of the last arrow I had practiced with—and that one had only barely hit the target. I’d need to get better in order to hit monsters, small monsters anyway, from this far away. But … that’s what I’m here for.
Walking slowly and quietly, trying my best to not disturb the grasses much as I passed through them, I closed the range from about twenty-five yards to fifteen, drew the arrow back, sighted, raised the bow just a touch to line up the glowing aimpoint of the skill guide with the bit of the rat I could see, scooted my aim a little to the left to adjust for the slight breeze, and let loose.
SWOOSH—I wasn’t able to track the arrow’s flight, it was too fast for that, but the pained squeal from the rat suggested I had hit my target. As did the half-depleted red health bar that appeared over it as it was bounding toward me, no doubt to wield its wicked incisors in vengeance for my unprovoked attack. That, however, was something I was going to try and prevent.
SWOOSH—and the arrow missed, apparently going high. I had forgotten to adjust my aim to account for the rat getting closer, so maybe I had hit where the rat had been for my first shot, but it had closed a good portion of the distance already.
SWOOSH—once more an arrow leapt from the bow, but this time after a slight delay where I rechecked my aim and nudged it just a bit lower, aiming for where the rat would, hopefully, be when the next arrow reached it.
The red health bar of the rat was now flickering dangerous low, and it was no longer trying to charge at me but was instead limping off to the side and away, perhaps trying to find a place to hide and recover. If this were the real world, the rat would probably have been fatally wounded and bleed out on its own, but in a game, who knows?
Not taking chances, I fired one more arrow and successfully killed my first monster in ECHO. It may have only been a large-ish rat, but it was an important first step. Unfortunately, it also took me four arrows, three hits and one miss to do so. That was a problem; I only had thirty arrows total, and finding an arrow that arced off to who-knows-where in all this tall grass might be more than a little difficult.
As I made my way to where the rat had fallen, the faerie flew back to me, half-dancing in her aerobatic display, “Hey! Congratulations! With your shooty-shooty, you killed a rat! The big meanies are overpopulated here, so thinning them out won’t hurt the environment. Go ahead and kill ten more! Hey, one more thing. In the tutorial here, your missed arrows will return to your quiver after a fight is over. But when you’re in the full world, you’ll need to find them yourself or buy extra. Or don’t miss! That helps too!”
While she was talking, a new notification arrived:
System Message: You have been offered a quest by Sunrise Sparkle, your fairy assistant in the tutorial. [Accept] [Cannot Decline]
* Riff-Raff, Big Rat, Meanie, Take That!: With your shooty-shooty, stabby-stabby, slicey-slicey, clunky-clunky, kicky-kicky, or any other means, successfully dispatch 10 Mountain Meadow Rats. Reward: One skill level for any currently slotted primary or secondary skill.
Eyebrow slightly raised as I read the reward, I accepted the quest and continued to that rat I had already killed. I retrieved my arrows from where they struck: left side near the back leg, right shoulder, and right flank. Surprisingly, there was no blood or gore. There also wasn’t any loot except the corpse, and I for sure wasn’t going to haul that around, inventory system or no inventory system. But as I pulled my last arrow free, the dead rat disappeared, leaving only bent grass and scuffed earth to show that it had been there.
Before I could complain, my attention was drawn to a flicker in the lower right of my vision. The triangle that the icon bar collapsed down into was flickering. When I willed it to expand, two icons were brighter and had a little motion to it. The bag, representing the inventory, and the scroll right next to it, probably representing the quest tracker.
Looking in my inventory first, I saw that two more of my twenty-eight inventory slots were occupied. Counting the quiver and longbow that I was currently equipped with, but kept placing back into the inventory, almost one half of the slots were already used up. Of the two new items, one was a “Large Rat Pelt (low quality)” and the other was a stack of two items labeled “Animal Bone (small).” Convenient that I didn’t need to cut up the rat to get its loot, but I was dubious that they had any real value. On the downside, an auto-loot function like that might introduce other problems, such as sharing loot with the group, once I had one, or being in danger of constantly having to throw out unwanted stuff to make room for more desirable treasure.
But let’s leave future worries for future times. For now, there’s rats to kill and skills to advance. Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll have time to poke through more of the settings and see if there are auto-loot options to customize.
I looked around, searching for another nearby depression in the grass or disruption of how it swayed in the wind, seeking indications of nearby rats. There was one to the north, well beyond the maximum range of the bow even if I could actually shoot that far. I closed in on it, keeping attention on the distance (and ignoring the flickering of a new notification), and stopped a bit beyond the bow’s effective range of about twenty-five yards. I had something I wanted to try.
I eyed the rat and concentrated on my spell, not entirely sure how to cast it with no buttons to click. After a few abortive attempts, I settled on willing the spell to fire while I pointed at the target and spoke the spell’s name: “Mistshard.”
Immediately, a silver-tinged, pale blue, foot-long crystal with the appearance of two faceted icicles materialized and flew toward the rat. It flew faster than walking speed, shedding little motes of light like snowflakes or dewdrops, but I probably could have kept up with it if I had wanted to try. After a count of thirteen, it apparently hit the rat and exploded into a fine mist of water and crystalline dust. With bow raised and arrow ready, I waited for the spell effects to fade—or the rat to come charging at me—but … nothing. When the little cloud faded, the rat was still there, seemingly unperturbed by the attack upon its body.
I glanced at the faerie, who had resumed her place standing on my right shoulder, and inquired, “What just happened? I hit it, didn’t I? That spell shouldn’t miss, if I understand it correctly.”
“Hey! To get more information about your performance in combat, you should view the combat log. It’ll tell you more about your shooty-shooty, casty-casty, and whatever else you do or have done to you.” She mimed shooting an arrow and then pointed, swinging her arm around in an expansive gesture that hit me lightly on the ear. As she did so, the triangle on the left side of my UI expanded, revealing again the ornately bordered, but mostly transparent, rectangle. The tab-like ornamentation on it’s top left flickered as she caused it to switch between active tabs. On the third, she stopped manipulating the interface, “There! Read and see and learn!”
There wasn’t much there. Apparently, my fights against the straw dummies or my shots on the practice range didn’t count as combat—or maybe enough time had passed that they had faded from the log—but what was there was revealing, starting with the first rat I had killed.
Your arrow hits Mountain Meadow Rat for 7 damage! Mountain Meadow Rat is now hostile!
You have missed!
Your arrow hits Mountain Meadow Rat for 7 damage!
Critical Hit! Your arrow hits Mountain Meadow Rat for 12 damage! You have slain Mountain Meadow Rat!
Your Mistshard heals Mountain Meadow Rat for 6 health!
“Huh?! I healed it?”
“Hey! Look at the first line for your first rat.”
I looked. What was different from the other lines in the combat log was that the first arrow that hit the rat had turned it hostile. When I had Inspected the rat before the fight, the rat had been neutral. “So…. Because this rat wasn’t marked as hostile, the spell didn’t hurt it?”
“Hey! You’re a quick learner!” Even if the blue faerie was a little bit annoying, her tone wasn’t condescending, but rather closer to teasing. Still, I was starting to look forward to being done with the tutorial and letting her go and help the next person. Idly, I wondered how many other tutorial assistant AIs there were since close to fifty thousand other players had to have gone through the tutorial already. Surely she couldn’t have helped them all. But that was a question for another time. My immediately priority had to be learning my skills and spells.
We talked a bit longer, and I learned that other similar situations could arise since spells and abilities cannot measure intent. Even though I had intended to hurt the rat, since the rat hadn’t yet been marked as hostile, the spell couldn’t treat it as an enemy and thus resolved its other effect. Perhaps that was better than doing nothing against neutral targets, since I was sure there’d be a time when I would want to heal someone or something that was neither friend nor foe, but it was a bit annoying now. That was the price of versatility, I guess.
The pattern of attack I developed was cast one or two Mistshards, and then take careful aim with my bow and fire off an arrow as the spells were approaching my target. So long as the rat was marked as hostile—which an arrow hit ensured—the spells did the damage I had intended them to. Rarely did the combo take a second arrow, and that was usually when the rat was level 2 instead of level 1.
The downside was the downtime. Two spells at five mana each was almost half my paltry pool of twenty-four, and not all of it regenerated in the time between killing one rat and finding the next—even with slight detours to Gather various plants and berries. (I didn’t see anymore Sweet Redberries, but I might have skipped them anyway. Those thorns hurt!) I did, however, confirm a guess based on previous gaming experience: sitting down and resting increased the mana regeneration rate. Probably health, too, but since I had yet to take damage, I couldn’t yet confirm that.
After slaying my fifth rat, while I was kneeling and resting, I took a moment to go through the system notifications that had been piling up. Most were prompting me to take various skills based on my activities so far: Cartography, Spellcasting, Tracking, Skinning, Meditation, Running, Acrobatics (probably from when I tripped over a small tussock and turned it into a somersault), Athleticism, and others. I also received notifications that both Archery and Gathering had increased to level 1. Further, Mistshard had leveled up once as well, though it didn’t seem to change its numbers at all. But it was one step closer to being able to evolve. And then there was this:
[System Broadcast] Xixonalaya has earned the Unique Achievement “Leading the Way” for being the first character to reach level 5!
I wasn’t even level 2, much less out of the tutorial yet, but maybe it said something that seven or eight hours into the game, the highest level someone had reached was only level 5. How long would it take to reach double digits? Nevertheless, that helped firm my resolve.
Some of the skills looked interesting or very useful, such as Cartography which would expand the range of the minimap, but there were more than I could take, yet. However, since I had been using my spell a lot, I took Spellcasting (B/B) as a primary skill almost more for the pure boosts to Brilliance as it levels than for what it granted: Increased potency of spells cast and spell modifiers (whatever that meant) at skill levels 1, 10, and every additional 10 levels. I also took Meditation (W/E) as a secondary skill. While the boosts to Willpower and Endurance (and thus mana and health) as the skill levels up would be nice, I wasn’t sure I wanted my actual level to depend, in part, on how long I sat around waiting for mana to come back. Plus, with those two skills selected, that left me with only one unselected skill slot, and there might be something else I wanted more.
Despite my earlier concerns about specialists being better suited for power than generalists, I was turning into a hybrid character, still a damage-dealer rather than a healer or tank, but a hybrid between physical damage via my longbow and magical damage via my spell—with a spot of crafting on the side. Oh well, I was (for the most part) having fun, and that’s what mattered. Even if I was having to have fun as a girl. Oh, my manly pride…!
Several plants and five rats later, I completed the faerie’s quest. As I was fighting, I was gradually increasing my attack range to the maximum range of my spell, and a few more arrows missed because of that. Rats, even rats much larger than normal, are still a very small target at thirty-some yards away. Even with the ghostly glow of the skill guides helping with aim, Archery wasn’t exactly “easy.” Not yet, anyway.
One of the good points of the downtime, waiting for my mana to regenerate, was that it allowed my arms to rest. I rolled my shoulders and slowly stretched my arms as I contemplated which skill to put the awarded skill point into. Archery was a possibility since it would slightly boost my ability with the bow, but Gathering wasn’t a priority. Dagger and Dodge hadn’t got used at all in my fights with the rats, so they hadn’t gained any skill experience beyond the little bit against the dummies, and Stealth was leveling slowly. That was, Sunrise Sparkle explained to me, a combination of it being a secondary skill, which meant it leveled slower than primary skills, and the fact that the use was unopposed. While I had been doing my best to walk quietly and stealthily, since the rats were neutral, they were effectively ignoring me anyway; thus, Stealth wasn’t really doing anything. Without spending too long at it, I finally decided to put the point into Spellcasting.
After I did so, I was briefly surrounded by a pillar of light (pale seafoam green, of course) accompanied by a brief fanfare of trumpets with high woodwinds skirling over them.
System Message: You have reached level 2! You have five unassigned attribute points to spend!