He is more trouble than he is worth. Everything you’ve built-
Everything I have built has been for someone just like him.
Be that as it may, that one cannot be expected to uphold an ideal like yours. He is rude. He holds no honor. He refuses to accept his reality.
Those are all exactly why I chose him. It is actually quite fortunate for me that he arrived early.
Your Creation itself even rejects him!
No, my Creation is merely confused by him. The circumstances of this one are so oddly unique… I can’t help but watch him intently.
What was that Backwash saying? Curiosity killed the cat?
Come now, Mei. We both know the Heroes will need to do such a thing to us all eventually.
‘Eventually’ is not now! He could just exploit this ability and stroll in here, slaughtering all of us! It could destroy everything!
And how do you presume he gets in here before level 100, hmm? Does he have a portal ability, or perhaps a realm-hopping Trait?
Well, no-
Does he hold any skill at all, and do you truly believe he’ll gain enough to take on any one of us at any point in time before he’s meant to?
But with his abilities-
With his abilities, he can do nothing more than power level, Mei. Not only that, but he only has access to a single class. I do not care about your pride or honor. He is a Hero. We do not willingly kill them until the Kamikonec. Until then, keep yourself in line.
But-
Mei. I trust you to do what’s right. We both know that means not to interfere with this one’s training. He might be the only hero his lands get back from this place.
…Fine. Though fully anticipate my ruthlessness in his trials.
I would expect nothing less.
When the sun was barely rising over the horizon, Ross awoke with a start. His mind thrummed with rapid flashes of imagery - a pristine, stainless steel temple. Quartz statues. Lamps alight due to some odd kind of bioluminescent mold. “There were two figures, one of which was familiar and the other new. They were… discussing something. Someone.” One appeared to tower over the other in size, but the smaller one held so much more authority than their acquaintance. The two had surely talked before.
A pounding migraine pushed Ross from his dazed stupor and back into the present. It felt like his eyes would pulse right out of their sockets. Everest was shaking Ross, saying something that he couldn’t make out. Only now did the unusual tinnitus kick in, the ringing forcing Ross’s eyes closed yet again.
What could have been a few moments or a few hours later, he reluctantly opened his eyes and observed his surroundings. Everest was huffing over a campfire in the middle of their protective circle - the fifteenth they’d had at this point - and looked up at Ross. When he saw his protege make eye contact, Everest walked over, handing Ross a stick with hunks of meat skewered onto it. Ross paused for a moment, listening to the crackling of the fire and breathing a sigh of relief. Only now did he realize how bad the ringing in his ears had gotten. He was just grateful that his skull wasn’t trying to implode anymore. He sniffed at the skewer, sighing. He missed salt.
“Kid, you feeling alright?” Asked Everest. “You were talking in your sleep. Something about a discussion?”
Ross blinked. He didn’t think he’d sleep-talked back home, but he supposed it couldn’t be helped. Maybe it was a side effect of this world? He shook his head to clear it. “I’m fine. Just a weird dream.”
A moment of silence permeated the morning before Everest spoke again. His mouth was half-full of his own kebab’s contents, which Ross’s system had identified as ‘Proza Flank’.
“So, how’s your sheet looking, kid?”
“Pretty good, actually. Got a few stat bumps from achievements, and I have a massive stack of 395 unused stat points. I wanted to wait for you to see where they should go.”
Everest nodded at this, scratching his scruffy stubble absently. “I’d highly recommend you get your Intelligence to 50 in any other case, which allows you to gain a new Trait. You gain one for each of your mental stats - Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma - once they hit 50, then again when they’re at 500. Your physical stats - Strength, Constitution and Dexterity - grant you a new Trait at 1,000 and again at 10,000. It’s sort of like an incentive to work on your stats alongside your skills. Too many people just focused on their skills and ignored stats, which of course gets them killed. Know why?” Everest gave Ross a pointed look, smirking. Ross nodded.
“Probably because it makes them too fragile, and because a lot of Traits - at least the ones I have for my Class and Subclass - rely on you already having a solid basis for stats.”
Everest grinned. “Good. You were listening yesterday.” He took off another hunk of the flank and tossed it into his mouth before nodding to Ross. “Now, back to your stats. I’d recommend getting intelligence to 50 now. Usually. You, however, are an odd case. You need to balance out your stats on the physical end.”
Ross scratched the back of his neck. “Why just the physical end?”
Everest blinked. “You really aren’t listening as well as I thought, then.” He sighed. “So your stats are physical or mental, with the exception of Luck. Luck is more of a stat to help the System determine your loot, as well as other percent chances like those in your Traits. Your physical stats are bent outta whack due to your massive Dexterity, so you need to get them closer together. You said you have 395 points?” Ross nodded, and Everest continued. “That means you’ll need to spend…”
Everest paused before pulling up Ross’s character sheet. He zoomed in on the stats, then counted on his fingers for a moment. “You’ll need to use 321 of those points on Strength and Constitution to get it perfectly equal. It may seem like a massive blow, but trust me when I say it’ll be well worth it.”
Everest zoomed out of Ross’s stats before freezing. “Wait a minute.” He muttered, zooming in on them again. “You’re already at 51 in intelligence and 52 in Wisdom. You should have gotten prompts for those.” He pulled up Ross’s sidebar, which didn’t have any new alerts. Everest grunted, then pulled up windows of his own which Ross couldn’t see. It seemed like he was digging for something. After several minutes and countless annoyed grunts later, Everest looked up at Ross.
“Sorry, kid. It looks like the system isn’t done being all fucky quite yet. It seems as though it doesn’t register that your scores have hit 50, which means you don’t get those bonus Traits.” Everest growled to himself for a long moment. “You really need that Trait, too…”
“What Trait is that?” Ross asked, clear concern in his voice.
“Omnilingual. Basically lets you talk to anyone in their own language. It doesn’t work on Animals until Rank 50 unless you’re a Druid or something, but it does work on all modern Languages immediately. The higher its Rank, the older the languages you can speak. Just need to hear it spoken once and you pick up on it like it’s your first language.”
Everest rubbed his eyes. “I’m gonna need to do some talking with Otectvurce to get this whole mess cleaned up. I’ll be zoned out for a couple of hours. In the meantime, stay in this protective circle. Boost your stats up to balance the physical ones, and go ham with your others. Then open those loot bags. They can give you all kinds of goodies, but the rarity can’t go beyond that of the bag itself. No Legendary items from an Uncommon Loot Bag. Once you’re done with that, if you still have time before I come back, sit still and wait. And for the love of all that is holy, read the descriptions.”
At that, Everest sat in the most uncomfortable cross-legged position that Ross had ever seen. He began floating a few inches off the ground, which made Ross jump in surprise. Other than the hovering, though, Everest was perfectly still. Ross huffed, then pulled up his stats. He did as he was told.
[ Stat Points Available: 74
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Stats:
STR: 234
DEX: 234
CON: 234
INT: 51
WIS: 52
CHA: 46
LUC: 78 ]
Immediately after mentally accepting the stat boosts, Ross’s body broiled with power and pain. He felt a hunger pang of unholy proportions, and his body bulked out disgustingly before compressing down into a more slim shape. It was still incredibly fit, but he didn’t look like a bodybuilder, either. A healthy inbetween of lean and bulky muscles. He frowned when he realized he had a potbelly, though it wasn’t anywhere near as prominent as it had been in his old life. He shrugged, assuming it had something to do with his Constitution. He felt loose, limber and healthier than a horse. He stood up and stretched, working the new muscles, realizing he’d even grown a few inches taller. He then got a small pop-up window that lasted just long enough for him to read.
[Congratulations! You have equalized your physical stats! While your physical stats remain within 10% of one another’s scores, you will not need to suffer the penalties of having an unbalanced body. In addition, for increasing your stats rather than decreasing them, you’ve gained the following benefits:
+234 Base Health
+24 Base Unarmed Damage
+23.4% Base Movement Speed ]
Ross grinned. Those were some serious boosters to his current build, and he’d only needed to fight a bunch of bosses to stop that god-forsaken level of hunger he had begun to associate with fights. He felt a massive weight lift off his shoulders at this, which made him grin. He looked over his sheet, deciding to round off his stats a bit. After all was said and done, he felt content with his stat layout.
[ Stat Points Available: 0
Stats:
STR: 251
DEX: 251
CON: 251
INT: 53
WIS: 53
CHA: 53
LUC: 91 ]
He didn’t feel much different after boosting his mental stats, though it was so minimal that he didn’t expect to. He felt a slight pang again after his second dose of physical stat boosts, but it wasn’t anywhere near the painful discomfort of before. He sat back down before flipping to his Loot Bag tab, which was glowing with dozens of notifications by now. He pulled up more information on the different bags, seeing how long this could take.
[Loot Bag (Rare) x79
A Rare Loot Bag. These Loot bags contain anywhere from 1-3 different kinds of items, and each item can be of any Rarity equal to or less than Rare. Unique items will not appear in Loot Bags of rarities any lower than Mythic, or in Unique Loot Bags.
Loot Bag (Epic) x13
An Epic Loot Bag. These Loot bags contain anywhere from 2-4 different kinds of items, and each item can be of any Rarity equal to or less than Epic. Unique items will only appear in Loot Bags of rarities equal to or higher than Mythic, or in Unique Loot Bags. ]
“Holy shit.” Ross muttered. He selected the Rare Loot Bags, and suddenly, 79 small sacks with small pictures of an embroidered golden crown on each popped into existence, right onto his lap. He felt his eyes bulge as the bags nearly crushed his legs, each feeling like a lead brick. He felt his eyes grow hot as a few were pressed into an unsavory place, and he hurriedly stood up. Even with his newfound strength, it was still an ordeal; he had to be careful of his boys, but also needed to be quite forceful with the immense amount of weight. Finally, he had pushed them all off of himself as he wiped the pained tears from his face. He then selected the Epic Loot Bags, then leapt backwards as those too poured out of nowhere. They landed on top of the Rare Loot Bags with a heavy thud, which made Ross jump.
He took a moment to observe the pile of bags. The stack was up to his waist, and as wide as a semi tire. He shook his head before picking up a random Rare Loot Bag, then opened it, noting how much lighter it was after he pulled the drawstring loose. When he went to look into the bag, the thing just up and vanished into thin air. In turn, he was slammed with a large notification in his interface.
[Rare Loot Bag
You have received: 2 items!
5x Torch
1x Enhanced Alchemical Bottle]
Ross blinked. He didn’t expect more than one of any given item from a single loot bag. He figured he’d ask Everest about that when he was done communing with Otectvurce. In the meantime, he pulled the bottle out of his inventory and read its properties.
[Enhanced Alchemical Bottle
Rare, Utility, Alchemy
A reinforced bottle used for alchemy. Most useful for holding corrosive or volatile materials safely.]
Ross nodded. That could be useful. He didn’t have to read what a torch did - if he needed to use it, he’d read it then. For now, he opened the next Rare Loot Bag.
[Rare Loot Bag
You have received: 1 item!
1x Toy Knife]
Ross blinked.
“No way. They didn’t-”
He pulled it out of his inventory and inspected it.
[Toy Knife
Uncommon, Offense
A knife made of plastic. Not as much of a rarity as it should be.]
He pinched his temples, shoving the thing back into his inventory. He picked up another bag at random. This time, it was an Epic Loot Bag, the crown embroidered onto it being a nice violet color rather than the gaudy gold of the Rare Loot Bags. He tentatively opened it, silently wishing he didn’t get something like ballet shoes next. This time, when he opened it, a small flash of orange and violet light flared from the interior before fading back down.
[Epic Loot Bag
You have received: 4 items!
1x Crafting Station
1x Kinetic Crafting Station Upgrade
3x Kinetic Shard
1x Upgrade Blueprint (Empty) ]
Ross blinked. A crafting station? Some upgrade for it? Kinetic shards? It was all too much for him to take in.
He heaved a sigh and was about to go into his inventory to read over the stuff, when he stopped himself.
“I should just open everything, then read all the descriptions.” He said aloud, picking up another Rare Loot Bag. He’d be there for awhile anyways, and he didn’t want someone or something to run off with these. It only made sense to pop them all open now. He looked at the new pop-up.
[Rare Loot Bag
You have received: 2 items!
1x Blowgun
6x Hardtack ]
Ross huffed. This was gonna be a long, tedious process. He hoped his improved Luck stat would help him out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[Epic Loot Bag
You have received: 3 items!
8x Hardtack
17x Torch
5x Slingshot Pellets ]
Ross held his face in his hands, though it didn’t hide the disappointing pop-ups. He’d been royally screwed over by the system, and only had a few actually notable items. Save for a few exceptions, he’d only gotten 102 bottles of water, 319 pieces of hardtack, over a thousand torches, 287 slingshot pellets and the stupid blowgun. He hadn’t gotten any blow darts, nor did he get a single slingshot. He’d also gotten an unspeakable item called ‘Swamp Extract’. It was essentially a weak poison that looked like someone had mixed black mold into spoiled chocolate milk. Even while it remained sealed in the jar, the smell drifted into Ross’s nose. It made him gag ferociously, and he’d shoved it into his inventory as fast as he could. He wasn’t one to throw away good possible reagents, but even he had to admit that forcing anything to even smell like that concoction was a fate worse than death.
Fortunately, he had found a few items that were worthwhile. First was something called a ‘Portable Pet Playground’. It was akin to a Bag of Holding, but it actually allowed him to store a living pet within it, and it even supposedly held all the food and entertainment the pet could possibly want while within it. All Ross had to do on his end was attune the pet to the P3 - the acronym that the item’s description insisted was the more common term for it - and the magical item would do the rest. No sooner had he read the description than a pop-up alerted him to a new tab for pets and mounts. He grinned, knowing full well this could either sell well or let him get a companion for his travels.
Next, he had a half dozen potions called ‘Knockback Draughts’. They granted him an amount of Knockback distance for his attacks equal to his Strength score in centimeters. Currently, he could knock someone back nearly eight feet with a single hit, and the thing lasted for five whole minutes. He made sure to be careful with those bottles, and ensured to keep them next to the hardtack, far away from his Swamp Extract.
The third item of note he’d gotten was something called a ‘Ring of Accumulation’. It let him store a resource that wasn’t Health, Hunger or Thirst in the Ring up to its maximum capacity, which was 5,000 Units. He’d gotten the first from an Epic Loot Bag, and another from a Rare. There was a distinct difference between the two; first off, one was Epic and one was Rare. The Rare ring held up to 1,000 Units of a resource, which was far worse than the Epic version. In addition, despite attuning to it, Ross couldn’t make the Rare Ring of Accumulation accept AP. After reading a notification after trying to put both on, he learned that wearing identical items on his body would do nothing but waste equipment space; the System would only read the more powerful of the two items, so Ross sighed and put the Rare Ring of Accumulation back into his inventory.
Finally, Ross pulled up an extremely odd-looking, perfectly pyramidal gemstone. The coloration reminded him of Bismuth, but it felt as hard as steel and its patterns were constantly moving like rippling waves in a pond. Its patterns weren’t square, either - they ranged from circular to hexagonal, a few even shaped like trapezoids. The longer he held it in his hand, the more the rainbow colors shifted to a very familiar orange and violet. By the time he’d finished reading its description, it was too late - the item had attuned to him, and was fully soulbound.
[Enhanced Resourceful Transmuting Arcane Focus
Epic, Utility, Conversion, Soulbound
Attuned to: {Ross_Olsen}
An arcane focus lets casters more accurately cast spells, and a Transmuting arcane focus lets those who normally couldn’t cast spells use resources other than Mana - typically Stamina or Health - to sling magic about.
SOULBOUND: A Soulbound item can only be used by the person it is bound to. Others who attempt to steal it will be immediately rendered unconscious, any immunities to the condition being ignored. Anyone who attempts to use it who is not {Ross_Olsen} will receive {1.97382667xe^978632} True Damage per Second. This item cannot break - its durability is tied to its owner’s lifeforce. Should it lose all durability, it will regenerate for 20 hours before returning to 1 Durability. You may then feed it Mana{SYSTEM_ERROR}AP until it is fully repaired, with 1 AP translating to 1 Durability Point.
Enhanced: An Enhanced item functions far better than other items of its kind, gaining bonus durability and reduced cooldowns.
Resourceful: A Resourceful item uses less of a resource - such as Health, Stamina or Mana - to activate its effects.
Spellcaster: You are now able to cast Spells using {Absorption_Point_ERROR}. Any {Absoprtion_Point_ERROR} put through this item will produce a ratio of (1{Ability_Point_ERROR} to 0.5 [Mana]) to cast spells. Consult a Trainer or Tutorial Guide to determine what spells your class is able to cast. ]
The idea of spellcasting did appeal to Ross.
For a moment.
Then the idea of learning a whole new system while still having absolutely no damned idea what he was doing with what he already had struck.
He slipped the rock in his inventory and decided to talk to Everest about it. Worse comes to worst, he’d just have to waste a bit of inventory space on the thing. After that was given to him by the loot bags, there weren't really any other items of note. Just a lot of resources.
After spending the better part of two hours setting up the last of his items in an order that made sense, Ross was deep in his menus. He was trying to find some equivalent to a hotbar. He’d already gone through fifteen different tabs in thorough detail with no luck, which honestly upset him more than it should have. With each failed menu, he became more dogged in his search for a way to quickly grab his most crucial items.
That’s why the sudden appearance of a wild-eyed, shark-toothed, white-skinned, scrawny elven girl popping up not five inches from his face made him leap nearly fifteen feet in the air. From above, he caught the eyes of Everest, who had just returned from his communion, looking up at him with a smirk. As soon as he heard the cackling from the girl, he knew she was no threat. After he landed again, she leapt - actually leapt - over to him, grinning widely. It had to be ten or so meters from her old spot to where she stood.
“Call me Ruth. I’ll be your first official Terraegnus party member! Everest told me you love surprises, so there ya go!”
Ross turned to glare at Everest, who was already on the ground wheezing.