Felix gasped for air as sweat poured off him. For the hundredth time in the last twenty minutes, he cursed ever summoning this sadistic demigod panda bear.
“Again,” shouted Piffin, who lounged nearby, munching on a cantaloupe. Felix narrowed his eyes at him, regretting his considerate gesture to give Piffin a part of his daily edible arrangement. He’d overcome the temptation to eat it himself, all out of the goodness of his heart.
I certainly didn’t give him my cantaloupe because he’s older than human civilization, a convict, and apparently can punch a hole in a world, Felix told himself. Definitely not.
Piffin looked up from his tasty treat. He scowled at Felix. “Kid, I said do it again. Quit dawdling, we’re on the clock here.”
Groaning, Felix dropped down into a pushup once more, before jumping up to his hands and then leaping upwards.
Of course, this is just my luck. Of all the things to be universal constants, burpees just had to be one of them.
He did another 25 sets of burpees and two hundred power squats before Piffin told him to stop and try jogging around the clearing. Eager to do anything besides burpees and power squats, Felix started on a slow jog. He didn’t get very far. Within five feet, he crashed to the ground.
Piffin looked over at the tangled panting heap that was Felix Chandler.
“Hey kid,” he said after a pause. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but did you ever get diagnosed with any chronic conditions back on your old world? Inner ear equilibrium imbalance maybe? Fatigue syndrome? Epilepsy?”
“No,” Felix managed to get out between gasps.
“Huh,” said Piffin, wedging the last bit of cantaloupe including the rind into his mouth. “Weird.”
“Can I ask you a question, Piffin?” Felix said when enough breath had returned to his lungs.
“What’s up?”
“Why am I doing workout routines when I have nine free points I could assign to strength, endurance, and dexterity?”
Piffin burped and wiped melon juice off his mouth with one furry arm. “You mean besides the fact that you’re already more awkward than a pubescent teenager at their first dance because of your current gains?”
“Yeah,” said Felix, flatly. “Besides that.”
Piffin stood up, walked over to Felix and offered one furry paw. Felix took it, and the bear pulled him up into a standing position.
“A few reasons. First, you know how mundane tier entities can get up to 20 points in every stat category?”
Felix nodded.
“Well,” continued Piffin, “that’s still true in later tiers. If your starting stat for strength was say, a four, and your skills and free points turned that four into a 10, there would still be 16 stat points you could potentially earn in that stat category before maxing out. You should definitely keep training until you hit that threshold for at least your physical stats. It’s just wasteful otherwise.”
Felix grumbled, but he couldn’t find any faults with Piffin’s logic.
“Reason number two,” his new mentor continued, “is that stat points don’t automatically translate into equivalent power. There are a lot of mental blockers that our bodies have put up over our lifetimes, telling us what we can and can’t do. The only way we can break down those blockers is to repeatedly push past our limits. You follow?”
“So what you’re saying,” Felix replied, a sly smile spreading across his face, “is that there is no spoon?”
Piffin scowled at his pupil again. “I’m assuming that’s some kind of pop-culture reference from your world, and I’m going to ignore it.” He kept going.
“Reason number three: I want to get a good look at you moving around so I can figure out why you are so abysmally bad at adjusting to stat gains. Three levels all at once is a lot, but it doesn’t explain…” Piffin gestured to Felix’s general vicinity. “-this.”
Felix’s shoulders slumped. He knew he’d been struggling, but after Piffin’s earlier statement about conquering his stat imbalance, he’d figured everyone went through the same challenges as him. Apparently not.
“Reason number four,” Piffin continued, unrelenting. “Is more important than all the others combined.”
“Oh?” asked Felix, the optimist in him daring to hope there might be some kind of silver lining. “What’s that?”
Piffin’s expression became deadly serious as he looked Felix directly in the eyes.
“It is really, really funny watching you fall on your ass.”
That fluffy sonofa- Before Felix could second guess himself, he pulled the dented paint can from his Porter’s Inventory and threw it at Piffin’s face as hard as possible. The panda bear just caught it with one paw and laughed.
“Nice try. But seriously, something else has got to be going on here. No one is this bad at stat adaptation. Let me see your info sheets again.”
Felix walked over and shared his information, making sure to once more edit out all the descriptions and titles he didn’t want Piffin to see, hoping that they weren’t the reason he was having so much trouble.
Piffin mumbled to himself as he reread all the information.
“And you said you already adjusted for your decreased body weight from the gravity modifier by adding enough weight to your inventories, right?” he asked, without looking up.
“Yep,” said Felix. “Double checked my math. I should now weigh almost exactly 200 lbs, which is what I weighed back on Earth.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
As Piffin combed through the title page a third time, he paused, and Felix saw that the panda had come to some kind of realization.
“Felix,” said Piffin, “Go ahead and grab me a long thin stick from your inventory about yay high.” He gestured from the ground to his belly button.
With a thought, said stick appeared in Felix’s hand. He didn’t even have to search for it. Piffin grabbed the stick and without further ado started making complex drawings in the sand of the stream bank.
Felix craned his neck to see. Were those mathematical formulas? Piffin giggled and muttered under his breath as he wrote out formula after formula. “Why didn’t I think of it before? It’s so damn obvious.”
Felix looked at the lines of formulas, re-evaluating his earlier impressions of Piffin as a bit of a meathead. This thing looked like a mathematical proof, and it was supposed to be obvious?
“Ok,” Piffin said at last. “It’s time for a bit of experimentation. First, take everything you can out of your inventories.”
Felix deposited the pile of sticks, logs, and stones on the bank of the river, along with one large blood smeared boulder. The only things he kept in his inventories were his bear meat reserves, Arry’s pen, the Monk’s Eye Mushroom, and the Dragon’s Breath Fern. The weight of all of those together though was negligible. He already felt like he was about to float away, his body weighing less than 100 lbs.
“Good, good,” said Piffin. “Now I want you to punch my hand as hard as you can.” He held up his paw.
Felix looked at the paw. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Didn’t you say your stat points are all capped at 10?” Felix double checked his character sheet. After the bonus from his furry pants, his strength was sitting at a respectable 17, which was nearing the peak of natural human potential. He could feel the added muscles all over his body as proof of his recent gains.
Piffin just grunted in amusement. “You know how I said increased stats don’t automatically translate into increased power? I’ve had a very long time to learn how to get the most out of my stats. Plus, ten is the average by species. Trust me, my species’ average physical stats are way higher than yours. Each of my points is worth at least two of yours.”
Shrugging and trusting that the panda bear knew what he was talking about, Felix threw his whole body into a punch at the bear’s hand. His hand rocketed forward faster than he had ever moved before. Then his hand met Piffin’s outstretched palm.
He might as well have hit a mountain. The open palm didn’t move a single millimeter. Felix looked at it with frustration and disappointment.
Piffin just nodded. “Mhmm, mhmm, about what I expected. Good. How does your hand feel, Felix?”
Felix flexed his wrist and rubbed his knuckles, finding not a bit of pain.
At least the durability stat increase seems to be working right.
“I feel fine,” he said.
Piffin nodded again, looking unsurprised. “Ok, now I want you to put everything back into your inventory, but this time, load as much as you can into the inventories with the lower weight modifiers. I want you as heavy as you can comfortably manage.”
Felix did as instructed, shifting the items around and feeling the odd sensation of different amounts of weight settling proportionally all over his body. After filling his Merchant’s and Rogue’s inventories to the weight limit, Felix realized with surprise that he could take even more. The only problem was, he’d run out of stuff.
“Hold on,” said Piffin, understanding Felix’s dilemma. He disappeared into the woods. A moment later, Felix heard a massive crashing sound. He turned and watched dumbfounded as Piffin hauled a freshly-cut mid-sized tree over to him.
“How did you-” Felix began.
“Doesn’t matter,” Piffin cut him off. “Just try and put this into your Porter’s Inventory. Should get you somewhat close to the limit.”
Felix put his hand on the trunk, and the entire forty-foot tree shifted into his Porter’s inventory. Felix staggered under the increase in weight. His whole body felt like it was getting compressed into the ground.
“Ok,” Felix said, from between gritted teeth as he slowly turned to face Piffin. “I think this is about my max right now.”
“Good,” said Piffin. “How much weight are you carrying after the modifiers? Don’t include the reduced gravity.”
Felix pulled up his inventory sheet and quickly did the math, finding the weight uncomfortable, but tolerable. “About 260 kilograms,” he said at last.
“Good, good,” said Piffin. “So assuming 90 kilograms for your body weight, you weigh about 350 kilograms before the gravity modifier, which means you weigh 175 kilograms after. Does that sound right?”
“Yes,” said Felix, he was starting to feel the strain a bit. He couldn’t do the math at the moment, but he knew he must now weigh double what he had back on Earth. It didn't feel like squatting weight. It felt far stranger.
“Alright, now go ahead and punch my hand again,” said Piffin.
Felix stared at the paw. With a heraclean effort, he threw his now significantly higher body weight behind a punch. It was like he was fighting through a curtain of molasses. Ever so slowly, the punch launched outwards, initially slow but steadily gaining speed. Felix’s fist met Piffin’s palm.
And then it kept going. Piffin’s brow shot up in surprise as he stumbled backwards from the blow.
“I knew it!” he cried out, ecstatic. Felix couldn’t hear him, he was too busy clutching a wrist that was already swelling and turning purple.
“Oh,” said Piffin, looking at Felix’s obviously broken arm. “Right. I probably should have expected that.”
-
“So, did you see what happened?” asked Piffin, excitement plain in his voice.
Felix glared up at him and gestured at his arm, which was now splinted with bits of wood and the twine from the bear meat packaging.
“Yeah, I did what you said, and I broke my arm.”
Piffin made a dismissive gesture. “Pfft. Now that we’ve splinted it, that’s going to take a day- two days at most to heal. Don’t be such a baby.” Piffin pointedly ignored Felix’s outraged stare. “The more important question is, why did it break your arm?”
Felix shook his head. He wasn’t going to be able to get out of this lecture. “Because my punch was too heavy,” he said, exasperated.
“No!” said Piffin, triumphantly. “It was because your punch had too much inertia. Big difference. Get it?”
Felix continued to glare at the Panda. He did not get it.
Piffin pulled his stick back out with impatience and started writing formulas on the ground again.
“See, my first mistake was thinking that the weight reduction on your skills had the same effect as that gravity reduction title. So stupid! When your skills reduce the weight of items in your inventory, it physically reduces the mass that you feel added to your body. The gravity title though only impacts weight, not mass, which means you’re moving around with twice as much effective mass as you are effective weight. Understand?”
Piffin looked expectantly at Felix, but Felix just stared uncomprehendingly at him. Piffin snapped the stick in two in his frustration, then he tried again.
“Listen closely. Felix punch think heavy. Feel heavy, but punch twice as heavy than Felix feel. Momentum bigger. Inertia more. More power to start punch. More power to stop punch. Punch much much stronger than Felix think.”
The penny finally dropped. Felix didn’t know much about physics, but it seemed his punches were actually moving around twice as much weight as he’d thought and felt.
“So what does this mean for me?” Felix asked, utterly done with the math class. It was time for practical applications.
“It means,” said Piffin, rolling his eyes, “that every time you adjust your inventory, you’ll have to adjust not only for a different weight, but a different mass and resulting inertia. Your body is constantly relearning how much force it takes to move itself.”
“That sounds like terrible news,” Felix exclaimed. “Why are you so happy about it?”
In response, Piffin lightly cuffed Felix on the head. “Because my oddly hairless little friend, once you master moving again, get a bit more durable, and learn up some martial arts, you’ll have the potential to be the most versatile short-range fighter this little planet has ever seen!”
“Oh,” said Felix. “Right.” That didn’t sound half bad.