There were lots of empty crates stacked outside of the buildings to the western side of the big, dusty square. While the north side held the warehouses, the east side had the stables and the south side was taken up by the guild complex, the west wasn’t as defined.
There was the big road that bisected the row of quiet wooden buildings, the only way into the square. It connected the training square/loading square to the main north-south thoroughfare that extended even out of the valley.
The buildings, though, seemed empty. Perhaps they used to be loading areas for the backs of businesses that extended the long block to the main road. Perhaps they still are, but rarely used. Whatever they were, it offered an excellent place to pile unused items, for others, and a place to find a seat, for me.
I eyed those empty crates and found one under a smaller overhang that would keep me out of the sun for the next few hours. It was pretty isolated from any others, so I got right to it and sat down to begin my daily Attribute training. Sitting down because I was working on my mental attributes, since finding space for a physical workout in the meantime would not be feasible.
Oh, I never really explained Attribute training or Attributes earlier, did I? So Attribute training is essentially pushing your body past its limit for long enough for the System to recognize that as your actual level. Once you are awarded that point in whatever you trained, it takes some time for your body to assimilate that energy and create a new baseline. Essentially, you need to get to the level where you were awarded the point and then go far enough beyond that to get another.
That means it’s better to focus on other Attributes after awarding a point since the naturalization period takes a bit. It’s the same for Unallocated Attribute points or Class points from Level Ups, but those are engrained in the Class so it's many times faster, almost negligible.
I don’t like to stop training any single Attribute completely, since I have the irrational fear I might lose Attribute points if I drop too far along the baseline. Considering I’ve never even heard of that, it’s just an irrational fear. But I still worry stopping will make getting back up there for the next point harder, so I’m mostly consistent.
Ok, Attributes. The six categories that the System defines as essentially making up your being. We have three physical: Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity, and we also have the three mental: Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma. I’ll give you a brief overview of how they work then we can get to my practice.
The Strength Attribute correlates to the amount of power you can produce. I think of it as making your muscles denser, which makes you stronger and sturdier. It also strengthens your bones, ligaments, and everything to handle that extra strength. Your health points are dictated by your Strength, but I think they are pretty stupid since those are just a representation of your body’s physical state.
Anyways, the Constitution Attribute is a bit more exciting. It dictates your health point regeneration, which essentially means your healing factor. If Strength is mostly understandable reasoning behind its improvement, Constitution has more System-magic-fuckery. More points there means you physically heal faster, both after a near-death blow or during a long workout. That means you have better endurance and stamina with a higher Constitution.
The last physical attribute is Dexterity, which is a lot weirder than the first two. It’s supposed to increase your fine motor control, perception, and movements in general. If I had to describe it, I’d say it improves finer aspects of muscles compared to Strength just improving the density. It doesn’t account for perception, since I don’t think eyes have any muscles, so maybe just consider it to be System magic. It is a great choice for crafters, though. Precise movements make detailed work much easier.
The first of the mental Attributes is Intelligence. Like Strength, it acts as a large-scale improvement for the brain, enhancing memory, speed of thought and even increasing the amount of mana you can store. Don’t even ask me how that works, assume magic since it literally deals with mana directly.
The next is Wisdom Attribute, which is a counterpart to Intelligence the same way Constitution is to Strength. Wisdom is how you are connected to the world around you, at least in a spiritual way. That will increase your understanding or perspective, leading to wiser decisions. The larger connection to the world also means you can regenerate mana more easily, which is the process of absorbing and purifying ambient mana.
The Charisma Attribute is the last of the six, which is much simpler to understand. It increases your social awareness and lets others feel more comfortable around you. Where Dexterity enhances perception, Charisma helps you recognize the minor social cues and micro-expressions, that you might’ve seen before, but not noted. There is definitely System magic involved, as people with high Charisma attributes have much more social sway than simply knowing what to say should bring, but I doubt that will ever be an issue for me.
As for why I have such low hopes for Charisma, just accept my lonely childhood as a reason. Take a look at where it is now, compared to everything else.
Name:
Leo of Cold Harbor
Level:
18 (8,471/19,000)
Age:
20
Class:
N/A
Attributes:
Strength
14
Constitution
17
+1 (18)
Dexterity
13
Intelligence
16
Wisdom
13
Charisma
11
Free Points
18
Professions:
Achievements:
[Reminiscent Traveler]
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Skills:
(Slot Open)
(Slot Open)
With that quick little description, I decided it was time for me to get started truly training. Looking up, I confirmed the canopy above me would keep me cool until I had to meet everyone by the cart, so I sat down cross-legged on the floor with my back to one of the crates and closed my eyes.
When training mental Attributes, meditation is an essential Skill. For those who don’t specialize in a mental Class type and don’t want to waste the Skill slot, there are lots of methods to get around it. The one I chose was to learn to meditate on my own. It will never be as powerful as the Skill, but as I improve I gain many of the same mental benefits of clearing my mind and steadying my emotions.
Plus, that type of meditation fits nicely with my daily goal of pushing my intention on the system. I use it kinda like a warm-up, where my mantra is whatever I want to happen and I focus on that as I fall deeper and deeper in meditation. Rather than just repeating the words, I resonate the idea with the whole of my being. I picture my attempt to convey my intention with the world and the System similar to the way Wisdom enhances connectivity to it.
I started simply with a simple goal and worked up during the ‘warm up’. First, I focused on how I will be able to choose a Class at Level 20 since that’s the Class Upgrade anyway and of course I will be able to. After I repeated that a few times, I shifted to thinking about the energy granted for a tier 2 Class upgrade will be included with the Class selection to make the options more powerful. Those were both things I had spent years on, and I was so confident in them I finished resonating in only a few minutes.
The last bit of System intention I worked on was a technique usually reserved for high-leveled warriors, but worth the extra time it’s taking me to learn now. I was working on sensing the powers of people directly, instead of using [Identify]. While I refused to waste the Skill slot on something so superfluous given the off chance I needed it for some type of true flight, it was mostly used to passively observe the power level of others instead of offending them with [Identify]. Considering that using the Skill can be seen as a challenge in the upper tiers, I truly understand this practice. Who would want to get into a fight with someone that strong?
The way I practiced this was to focus on feeling the System interacting with the world around me, how it connects to different things, and portrays that information. Since practically anything can be identified using some variant of [Identify], that proves the System must be everywhere. I imagine that it is intertwined with mana at its most base level, and since mana saturates everything to some degree, so does the System.
I probe those connections, feeling for the information and getting used to the different layers within the imaginary strands. This had also taken years to get to this level. It was much slower than warriors that have advanced identifying Skills to base their strategy on, but since I started so much earlier I will be adept at it soon enough. Most of the work goes into learning to sense, feel and connect with those layers of the System, the last step is just learning to interpenetrate that data to an understandable form. I’ve been procrastinating that move for months, telling myself I can shore up the foundation aspects of the skill, but I’ll get to it soon enough.
With my warmup done, I decided to focus on the Intelligence attribute today. Both that and Wisdom can be practiced with mana control, but I can also work on pushing the limits of the mana in my body. Dangerous, if you have to go past that limit in a non-controlled training environment, but not an issue, especially if your body has naturalized to the last Intelligence point awarded. It has been a few months, so I was just about completely naturalized again.
In the blank slate of meditation, I turned my thoughts from working on System connectedness and started to silence my mind. My mental image faded into a black void and a hazy sphere appeared. My core. It was not an actual sphere in my body, since mana isn’t exactly physical nor does it collect in any one spot, but that was a basic way to envision it.
A basic primer to magic explained that this was the best standard method for everyone, considering its ease to train and relative power, but the owner of the book explained that the best form is the one that resonates with you. She didn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, explain any more than that, but she did say I would know when I figured it out.
That’s why I kept my core visualization blurry, despite the minor increase in training difficulty, it meant I wouldn’t worry about finalizing an imperfect core. As was tradition, I swapped the sphere out with a few objects I had seen recently or came to mind. Today, that meant a miniature of Borris’s wagon, a peculiar rock I found, and a goose, again.
Finally back to the spherical core in its slightly blurry state, I willed the energy within it to condense. As it shrunk just enough for the shell of the core to become distinguishable I held it there for a few minutes, waiting for that fraction of my mana to replenish. It filled, I released my mental hold on the mana, it expanded to its uncompressed state and mixed with the new mana. After a few minutes of letting the shell stabilize, I condensed again and repeated the process.
Unfortunately, stabilizing the shell after even multiple increases is not enough for it to be permanent. The stability only lasts just long enough for that section to be filled, if I got my sizing right, but it pushes the limit of my core enough to improve Intelligence at a pretty good rate. Much rather be doing meditation than solving complex math problems to raise it that way. Even if they are aerodynamics problems.
The best part about spending so much time working on my meditation skills is that I’ve advanced enough to be aware of my surroundings to a decent extent. So quite a few repetitions later, a new group of people joined my section of shade and I went from passively ignoring the world to actively ignoring a rowdy group of [Guards].
That is until I heard them mention me, because who wouldn’t be curious after that. Tuning into their conversation, I quickly realized these weren’t just the caravan’s [Guards], but the party of [Adventurers] that Borris mentioned would be joining us.
“No way,” A man said in a deep, calming voice. “I didn’t even see him twice that whole time we were talking with the [Merchant]. He’s using [Meditation] and might as well be blind and deaf until it wears off.”
“Plus, where else can we talk about this?” A different voice said. “The whole square is swarming with laborers and the whole town will be filled with rumors by nightfall if they hear the wrong thing.”
“Shut it, both of you,” commanded a stern woman, who I’d bet money was in charge. “Knowing the cargo for this trip may change things, and I need to hear if anyone thinks we shouldn’t take this job.”
“It’s fine with me,” A fourth voice said, another woman this time. “We know the dangers of the area and what’s in the wagon frankly doesn’t matter that much.”
“You know my opinion. I’m not here to make decisions, just to fight,” said another man in a very gruff tone. If I wasn’t so curious about what all this stealth was about, I would’ve opened my eyes right there to get a look at them.
“Eh, all this drama for a stupid Skill Crystal transport quest doesn’t seem worth it,” the second man said in a tone much too casual considering the information he revealed. If I wasn’t meditating I’d be frozen in shock, frankly, it almost broke my concentration and I missed the response to that comment. From what I got, it was the leader reprimanding the last man, who must’ve filled the party’s Rouge archetype going by his relationship with the rules. I zoned in just as the first man started speaking again.
“Regardless of his indiscretion, I agree. Reject or at least reassess the situation,” said the man with a calm voice. “Protecting a Crystal is nothing strange, but being so secretive about it certainly is.”
“I hear your opinions and questions. I will do my best to remedy them with the [Merchant], but with nothing serious enough to break our word, we continue with the job,” the leader said in a way that indicated the discussion is over.
The conversation immediately returned to more mundane things and I quickly lost interest. My mind was still fixated on the fact that the caravan I’d be joining was transporting a Skill Crystal.
Skill Crystals are super rare, incredibly expensive dungeon rewards. Apparently, they don’t even take up a Skill slot, so I can’t imagine how much they cost. You can either get a natural one from a dungeon reward or get someone to make one, gods know-how.
Out of all the unreasonable options for finding a way to fly, I’ve definitely considered going the Skill Crystal route. Sure, it wouldn’t come with Skills to supplement it, as I’d get from a flight-based Class, but it wouldn’t be a terrible option. The biggest problem is that it would feel like giving up. Since there is absolutely no way I could afford one, I’d have to choose some stupid combat class and just grind away at an Air or Wind themed dungeon until I get a Skill Crystal. Even then, it’s not guaranteed the Skill would be [Flight] or some variation.
So my musings aside, it was a pretty big deal that we had a Crystal with us. Granted, I’d assume they are sold just as often as they are immediately used, and they have to get from the seller to the buyer somehow, it's just strange to think that we’re going to be that middleman.
It does raise the question as to where that dungeon was located since Borris had just come from the south and they’re not much going on down there. Hmm, maybe that’s why they are so secretive. That, or it’s the rarity of the Skill. Or maybe it’s stolen?
Actually, I should stop guessing because it’s just going to make me more curious. This could easily turn into some dangerous plot and that’s something I want no part in. Even though I want to know… Ahh, whatever.
I tried to get back into meditating, trying so hard to focus that all I was focused on was focusing. Unfortunately, nothing helped after that crazy conversation. Eventually, the party of Adventurers wandered away and I was left alone in my rapidly disappearing slice of shade. When the first rays of sun started landing on me, I realized that it was just about midday, the time the caravan was leaving.
Composing myself one last time, in case the Adventurers were being cautious of the knowledge they let slip, I opened my eyes and looked toward the wagon. It was not empty like it was this morning, but there were still several wooden crates and burlap sacks sitting around as the crew secured them to the bed one at a time.
I decided that now was a good time to spend my change from Borris and buy myself one last meal before I truly had to rely on rations. A few coppers will be practically worthless when we’re weeks from civilization, so I might as well spend it.
Name: Leo of Cold Harbor Level: 18 (8,471/19,000) Age: 20 Class: N/A Attributes: Strength 14 Constitution 17 1 Dexterity 13 Intelligence 16 Wisdom 13 Charisma 11 Free Points 18 Professions: Achievements: [Reminiscent Traveler] Skills: (Slot Open) (Slot Open)