Two months passed by in a blur. Exill continued to dive into the Labyrinth with Grundle, taking on a varied combat approach thanks to his new bow. All the while, their coordination increased as they regularly started taking home 20~30 Denars each. Sometimes one of them would get hurt, knocking them out of commission for a couple days. The other would then venture into the Labyrinth solo, taking care to not get similarly injured.
Exill was especially proud of having managed to save up 600 Denars, an emergency fund to tide him over for a month or two. It may not be much, but the psychological benefit was remarkable. From personal experience, he knew how difficult it was for someone to plan for the future if they were barely getting by, surviving day-to-day. This gave him the breathing room to take risks and to grow.
Two weeks ago, he had successfully raised the level of [Warrior] and [Hunter] to lvl 20, unlocking their progressions [Spearman] and [Ranger]. It had unlocked some powerful perks:
Job Warrior Level 23 Description Melee Combat - Tier I
Passive Buff
+10% attack speed (scales with level).
Minor Strength Bonus
Job Hunter Level 22 Description Melee Combat - Tier I
Passive Buff
+10% attack speed (scales with level).
Minor speed bonus
Job Spearman Level 5 Description Melee Combat - Tier II
Passive Buff
+10% attack damage (scales with level).
Job Ranger Level 5 Description Ranged Combat - Tier II
Passive Buff
+10% attack speed (scales with level).
Inspecting the four jobs, Exill shook his head in exasperation. He was no closer to solving this particular mystery. Jobs like [Warrior] and [Ranger] had similar perks that increased attack speed, but it wasn’t readily apparent if the effects stacked. Worse still, he had spent the past two weeks devising elaborate experiments that failed to yield any answers.
‘I’m fairly certain that the strength bonus imparted by [Warrior] and [Blacksmith] add up because I remember feeling stronger when both jobs reached level 20…’ yet Exill continued to shake his head, ‘… but that doesn’t mean that intangibles such as attack speed similarly stack, and if they do so in an additive or multiplicative fashion. How do I measure a 10% increase in swing speed without precision instruments!?’
As a former engineer, it was painful that he couldn’t measure, let alone calculate the optimum method of advancement. It was especially relevant now because he had four combat skills and only seven job slots. ‘How am I supposed to prioritise the assignment of jobs when I have so little information!?’
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[Planeswalker] and the seductive ‘Would you like to increase job slots?’ option tempted him from a corner of his mind.
“No.” He promised himself he wouldn’t. Never again. Tearing his eyes away from the alluring, yet dangerous skill, he focused on the original task. Today was a special day because [Witchdoctor] had finally been unlocked. He was eager to find what skills or bonuses the long awaited unlock revealed.
Job Witchdoctor Level 1 Description Production - Tier II
Active Skill:
[Treatment] -10% chance of infection (scales with level)
Exill’s mouth twisted in a moue of discontent, he had been secretly hoping for an overpowered magic skill that scaled proportionally to its difficult in attainment. At first glance -10% infection seemed fine but on closer inspection… it just raised further questions.
‘When it says the bonus scales with the level, does it mean 100% elimination of infection at level 100? Does it scale linearly? Is level 100 even the maximum job level?’ he sighed… when faced with too many questions it was important to take a step back.
Exill remembered his mentor before taking the Large Hadron Collider posting. The old man had often warned of tunnel vision, and not seeing the forest for the trees. Exill relaxed and allowed his mind to wander, searching for inspiration.
His train of thoughts flowed from his mentor to his engineering career. The various obstacles that had been overcome, how it had been both challenging, and rewarding. Moreover, his heart swelled in pride for his contributions towards discovering the Higgs Boson. He was proud of human ingenuity and the spirit of experimentation.
‘I wonder if there is an Engineer job.’ Exill was suddenly struck out of reverie. He rummaged under his bed and impatiently wetted the clay surface. With trembling hands, he wrote the following:
> ‘1+1=2’
Nothing happened. Exill lowered his stylus in disappointment. He tried again, this time with something harder and started solving a differential equation.
> ‘f(x) = dy / dx…’
He felt a [Ping!] resonance deep in his core and excitedly opened the Card to find a new job.
Job Mathematician Level 1 Description Arcane- Tier I
Passive Buff:
minor bonus to intelligence [INT]
Exill pumped his fists in the air, ecstatic! If there was [Mathematician], there would likely be [Engineer] as well! He assigned the new job to an active slot and started writing even more equations.
> ‘e = mc2’,
>
> ‘T = F x r x sin(θ)’,
The stylus quivered in disappointment… there had been no further resonations. Exill had pinned high hopes on the torque equation when Einstein’s law of relativity failed to yield any results. Nevertheless, he opened his Card and was surprised to find a new job on the available list, albeit greyed out and inactive.
[Scientist] requires [Mathematician] lvl 20.
He scoffed. It was absurd the system walled off [Scientist] behind [Mathematician] when all you needed to be a man of science was testing your hypotheses, something he had repeatedly been doing since arriving here. As a famous TV show once said, "The only difference between screwing around and science [was] writing it down." He felt incredibly cheated that it wasn’t a Tier I job.
Despite that, he was satisfied with the results. ‘Are engineers not practical scientists?’ Exill mused… something good would surely be obtained when it was fully unlocked. The records on his clay tablet were also updated, showing that [Mathematician] had rose to lvl 3. This begged the difficult question,
‘What now?’
There were 19 unlocked jobs, four of them combat related and permanently assigned to active job slots. That only left three he could raise passively in the Labyrinth. Exill spent many hours lying in bed, staring up at the peeling plaster while planning his next steps. Disappointment lingered over [Witchdoctor’s] lack of utility when a sudden thought entered his head.
‘Did that intelligence bonus from [Mathematician] make me craftier?’ he scoffed at the absurdity of the plan that was slowly taking shape in his head. This turned to tentative nodding as he assessed the pros and cons of executing such a devious scheme. Finally, he resolved himself, committed to the series of actions he would take tomorrow.
Exill was startled by a sudden [Ping!] deep in his soul. He swiftly summoned his Card, eyes widening in recognition.
Job Conman Level 1 Description Outlaw- Tier I
Active Skill:
[Bluff]: your lies are 10% more believable (scales with level)
“World’s Will be damned…”