Having called it quits, Frank pulled a picnic blanket and basket out of his backpack and set it up. Being passed a sandwich Lauri he shook his head, "I'm going to drink some Agility potions. These vials may look small but they add up quickly."
"I shall wait then. These are of the common potion type. Which is a mana and herb infused water and water passes through the stomach quickly. Just avoid hyponatremia."
"Huh?" It took a while before he had drunk all 16 of the potions and it would be a while still before his stomach had emptied, so they made conversation. "My belt adds 210 Strength but my current score is only 28. Do you know what's the deal with that?"
"Everyone knows Attribute points added by items can't take them past their maximum."
"Maybe in this world but you saw the same entrance spiel as I did. Still, no more potions for me then. I can easily cap out with items."
"Perhaps if you were to tell me more about your scheming then I could better be of aid."
"Sure. I wanted to wait until after the potions because otherwise the math involved might have seen their gains divided."
"As you possibly intended, I do not understand what you mean?"
"Okay, so, all the horses here are level 15, right?"
"I've seen some of levels 10 and 20."
"Huh. I wonder if the portal dropped us off at a level appropriate area? Would we find level 100 horses if we move far enough?"
"Does it matter? The resulting mount is the same and the coins are superfluous."
"Maybe. First look at that level 15 horse, specifically, the one at the edge of the pack," Lauri used Drain Life on it.
"It changed to level 12?"
"And I changed to level 4."
"Indeed I can see that you have. How have you managed this world-law breaking exploit?"
"Huh? That's not the exploit. That's a default skill that anyone starting out a level 1 Sealer gets. From what my guild master said I assume its been around at least a century."
"For it to fall out of favour so long ago, what's wrong with it then?"
"Wrong with it? Actually yeah, I noticed a big problem. See, all stats are adjusted by a factor of the difference between my level before and my level after. So the more I level up the lower my attributes get."
"What do you mean?"
"Okay so, I had 50 Toughness at level 1 and I'm now level 4 with 200 Toughness."
"Impressive. What's your HP?"
"440 out of 2,000 but the point is, if I level my profession to level 2 and put all 30 of my available Attribute Points into Toughness then I'd have a Toughness of 80, right?"
"Sorry but could you explain how what you mean about levelling you profession?"
"I'll just share my status with you since I'm telling you everything anyway."
{
Class: Ritualist
Profession: Level 1 Sealer
Effective Level: 4
HP: 440/2000, PP: 1,350/1,560, MP: 11
Strength: (48) 112, Toughness: 200, Agility: 76, Memory: 56, Reasoning: 32/64, Charisma: 124/96, Destiny: 4/8
Skills: 5
}
"Oh, you're still level 1 in your profession despite your effective level having increased. It is as if you have levels in a profession that doesn't exist."
"Huh?"
"Your stats defy what everyone knew about effective levels. It reads as the total of each level you have in each profession. By the way, do you have more than max Charisma?"
"Yeah."
"How?"
"I don't know but once I've drunk a few Potions of Potential Charisma I'll only be over by 1, so I don't think it's a big deal."
"What is Destiny? Do you have a destiny?"
"I don't know. Also I just noticed that my MP was 3 but changed to 11. That's not consistent and it bugs me."
"Okay but what's your exploit?"
"So, these after the temp levels go away let's say I gain a real levels. At level 2 I bring Toughness to 80, then use Drain to gain 2 temp levels, and I'm back to level 4. At this point my adjusted Toughness would only be 160. Meaning after levelling my profession just once I'd lose 400 HP compared to what I have now."
"Right but if you simply reach 100 Toughness at level 2 then your all good?"
"Huh. Yeah... Oh, but watch this," Lauri activated Protection Bubble and gained a shield value of 1,240, as did Frank.
"You can shield us?"
"I had a hunch I could. I don't know if the points are a shared pool but it's cool, right? I hope to still manage to make a tank build."
"You should have put up a shield when you were being... chained to death."
"Oh shit... No, wait, the chain ignores shields so it wouldn't have helped."
"Perhaps not the best weapon for you then? If you want to focus your shield attribute."
"That's the thing though, at level 1 I can gear all my attributes to max and become a Jack of all trades, master of all trades."
"I am starting to understand the fundamentals of your proposed exploit. What is the limit of this Drain ability?"
"Once per target and... let's find out." Targeting more horses, [+3 Levels], [+3 Levels], [+3 Levels], [+2 Levels], [+1 Level], [Target too low level] "Seems I can reach 1 level higher than my targets, if I have enough targets."
{
Class: Ritualist
Profession: Level 1 Sealer
Effective Level: 16
HP: 1540/8000, SP: 4,960 PP: 4785/6010, MP: 44
Strength: (192) 402/448, Toughness: 800, Agility: 304, Memory: 224, Reasoning: 128, Charisma: 496/384, Destiny: 16/32
Skills: 5
}
"You only took 390 damage but now it's over 6,000 adjusted damage"
"I'd need to be level 26 for it to be over 9,000."
"I said 6,000."
"I know. But yeah, using attribute points I was seeing little improvement to no improvement. My Drain based effective level was actually getting worse stats whenever my profession levelled up. Now I'm basically OP."
"You are at least comparative to someone who drank thousands of attribute potions."
"Speaking of, I'm back to potions. Attribute items, turns out, are a bust."
"Please do share how you reached that conclusion."
"Strength was capped before but now isn't." Lauri took his belt off to demonstrate and his Strength dropped to 192 before he put it back on.
"Okay?"
"The amount provided by items seems fixed. Otherwise I'd still be at max."
"Compared to the larger SP expenditure, it's a minor difference."
"Minor now but since it doesn't scale it would be a huge difference at, say, effective level 26."
"I see your point. By the way you used your ability, what, 6 times?"
He checked his logs, "yeah 6. Why?"
"It sure chews through a lot of your power."
"Yep. 50 per pop."
"I feel compelled to inform you that you have used up 1,225 of your power."
"Cost of 50, 6 times, yeah... 1,225 is correct."
"That's a joke, yes?"
"Want to death duel over it?"
"Are you certain that you don't know anything about this Destiny Attribute? No hints what-so-ever?"
"Honest to the goddess the only hint I have... is it can make the difference between a one second pause in a sentence."
"You must elaborate."
"The guild duel, you didn't hear everything?"
"I overheard some things."
"We were fighting over a math problem and it came down to whether there were implied brackets. Which came down to whether or not there was a pause in the reading of the question. There wasn't, which means I was right. When I was proven right I gained 1 Destiny potential."
"Okay that's how you gained it but what does it do?"
"I really don't know. Maybe all it does is things like a few seconds difference in how long it takes to tame a horse?"
"Oh. Only the difference between life and death. In other words I should decline that duel?" They both laugh.
"Why didn't you use Drain Level on a horse when being strangled?"
"I feel like I could eat now"
They enjoyed their picnic until finished eating and Frank was ready to leave. Lauri reminded him, "you claimed you weren't leaving until we had a profit."
"That was before we called it."
"Nah, we were calling a break. I feel like I'm strong enough to drag a horse."
"How long do these temporary levels last?"
"An hour."
"Well it's your life, literally."
"Good point. I don't want to find out what happens if I can't drag a horse. So I'll do the leg thing." He wraps the chains around his legs.
"I suppose I'll need to chase a horse this way then?"
"I'm going to try and worm my way to one."
Lauri lied down on the ground and started to crawl towards the nearest horses. Once within 10 meters he grabbed each end of his chains and tossed them without even any build-up. He was confident in his strength increase and right to be, as the chains flew through the air for some 20 meters. The horses started to flee but there were too many under the chains for none to be hit and as they did they became vividly animate. The very moment the middle of one chain touched a horse it started to circle the horses legs. For an instant the end of that chain seemed to freeze in mid-air and then reverse direction as it was reeled in by its middles actions. This happened too to the second horse lucky enough to get first touch. With the end of that side having fallen low beforehand, it became taut on many a horses back as it reeled in, moving so fast that it should have gouged them all. The magic rules of the chains disallowed incidental damage, otherwise those horses might very well have been cut in half like it was a chainsaw. Lauri was dragged only a couple meters by the two horses before he pulled back against them. It wasn't actually his strength that stopped them but becoming constrict around the legs of all three. The horses struggled for a while but soon became tame, displayed with a shower of coins from each.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
"It worked!"
"Indeed it seems. Game to try and capture a whole stables worth?"
"Yeah!"
They captured a total of 10 horses before the hour from Drain Life ran out. The parts that took the longest was walking between packs or waiting for packs to stop running and stand still. While Lauri could have repeated his Drain Level trick the two agreed that there's 10 horse stables and to head back to the portal. A group of five adventurers intercepted them as they walked towards the exit to claim that two of the horses were from the pack they were wrangling. "They were our mark so hand them over."
Frank wasn't having it, "this floors free for all, the System knows how wrangles which."
"Oh yeah, this floor is a PvP free-for-all, you're right. You seem to be asking for a fight. If that what you're saying? Maybe look at our PvP stats before starting something."
This grabbed Lauri's attention as he was new to such things. "You made your stats public?"
"You made your level public?" He mocked. "PvP stats can't be hidden. Not if someone actively checks them. It's part of the goddesses 'justice' you level 1 green-horn."
Lauri turned white, "anyone can see? Mine only says 1 right? How do I check?"
One of them is startled and then taps the others. Soon the five of them were backing away before they turned and ran. Lauri didn't notice as he was more concerned with a new status window he'd located now that he knew what to look for.
{
PvP Statistics
Sapient kill count: 142
Highest kill level: 250
PvP area kills: 0
Bad Karma: 0
}
"Oh goddess... anyone can look at this? At least is says I have no bad karma, that means I didn't do anything evil or wrong or anything, right?"
"It can't be made private but it's not damning from what I see."
"It should only read 1, the rest weren't my doing. Say, did those guys leave without their horses."
"It was a shakedown, they had no claim to these horses."
"Well yeah but they weren't asking for much and I felt kind of sorry for them. Running around for hours and getting nothing from it. Did you say something while I was distracted?"
"I think they were intimidated by the way we both barely registered their existence."
"I can't help that, the numbers were against them. So sorry I didn't feel threatened enough," he ended sarcastically.
"5 against 2? Numbers were really against them," Frank returned some sarcasm.
"Yeah, because that gives me 5 uses of Drain Level."
"What fools. They should have lined up and come at you one at a time."
On their exit from the dungeon they still had all 10 horses they'd captured and the man stationed there gave a wave. "Looks like a good haul. My name's Grey by the way."
"Sure is. Hi Grey. I'm Lauri. Bye Grey."
Upon arrival back at the city Lauri was attracting a lot of attention. People looking at him and and whispering about him from a distance. As soon as he became self conscious of this Lauri stopped in his tracks. "Everyone knows, don't they?"
"Rumours will certainly be circulating by now."
"But they can see, can't they? So they know?"
"Quite truthfully, yes, aside from your level your public information would confirm the rumours."
"Could you lead all the horses to your stable? I think I need to drop by Tutorial Dungeon."
"Okay but you can't hide forever. No matter how upset anyone is about anything at all, don't accept any death duels."
"You kidding? I live for death duels. My opponents are done for the moment they challenge me."
Frank laughs. "I understand that humour is often the best way to deal with the new and unknown."
Lauri headed for Tutorial Dungeon, intent on repeating it as many times as it took the get a new copy of Hold Monster. While the Sleep skill was great it only worked on things that can sleep. Knowing that only the level 4 to 5 ranged floors had ghasts on them, Lauri realised he'd need a target for Drain Level prior to entering, so decided to buy a pet. After a glance at how many pets there were he purchased a few healing potions and power potions. He also purchased enough potions of potential to raise all of his attributes to 30, plus 1 extra for Charisma. There were no potions in System Market for Luck or Destiny so those stayed as they were. Lauri unmounted his bull and laid on the ground as he took his time drinking and played with filtering pets. Seeing a select few level 7 pet he got excited as reasoned that he'd might be able to equip the pet. With the level repeated unnecessarily he toggled it hidden and filtered any too expensive to afford. He considered further reducing max price but doing so would only eliminate two pets, so wasn't worth the finger taps.
{
SP: 611,460
[Cost in System Points]: [Name], (Misc.) Notes
10: Horseshoe Bat (Has blindsight) Notes: Only buy if you love ugly things or want the cheapest for this level, it's seriously ugly
15: Naked Mole-rat (Has a flying kick)
15: Blobfish (Keep in water)
100: Goldfish (Keep in water)
100: Rabbit (Knows the time)
100: Turtle Hatchling
100: Ladybug (It's lucky)
50,000: Husky Pup
50,000: Shorthair Kitten
}
[Purchased 1x Ladybug for 100SP]
He wasn't sure why there was a massive price jump at the end but there was no need to dig into that. Lauri liked that ladybugs are small as that suited his preference right now. He dared not hope that the pets luck would help him in any way, as if that were the case it would have been much more expensive. Reaching the spare Charisma potion he drank it and thus finished maxing all his potentials. The last was wasted as Charisma Potential didn't raise past 30 meaning that technically he was finished a potion earlier. Lauri tried to equip his pet Ladybug but failed to meet the level requirement. "Why do these pets even have a level requirement? That has to mean that they do something, right?" He wondered as he used Drain Life on it, [-3 Levels], [+3 levels]. He tried to equip it again and this time succeeded. His effective level 4 meeting the ladybugs reduced level of 4. "It worked but I don't know what I get from having it equipped." He activated Protection Bubble and checked his status. Needing gold to enter, he purchased 9 gold coins for 5 SP and went up to the entry to pay 2 gold. About to step through the portal he stopped, "oh, I almost forgot."
[Purchased 1x Breathe Easy Gorget for 200,000 SP]
{
Class: Ritualist
Profession: Level 1 Sealer
Effective Level: 4
HP: 2000, SP: 1240, PP: 1360/1600, MP: 11
Strength: (48)120/120, Toughness: 200, Agility: 76/120, Memory: 56/120, Reasoning: 32/120, Charisma:124/120, Destiny:4/8
}
Gorget equipped under chain, status checked, everything prepared, Lauri stepped through. The moment he did was tossing his chain to the right and dodged an Ankheg attack. Pulling his chain, that had so quickly snaked its way around the giant insect, it started constricting around the arms, legs and neck of the both of them. Quickly neither could move much at all. "Alright buddy, this metal neck guard was very expensive because all the cheaper ones were class restricted. Shall we put it to the test? Yeah? Okay." Lauri struggled in reeling the chain due to having bound arms so started turning on the spot, which proved successful, with the chain tightening enough that they started dealing damage. He kept slowly twirling against increasing resistance until the chains had done 200 damage to the Ankheg and double that to himself, dropping 8 coins as it died. "200 damage? Last time it only took... less damage. I forget how much but you were level 3 that time, so I'll forgive you."
Checking the next room Lauri saw 5 skeletons, 5 zombies and a ghast. In case the slightest chance he might get another Destiny Potential Lauri spoke out loud "The exact same floor? It must be destiny." This only accomplished alerting the undead to his presence. "Was worth a shot."