Leo enjoyed a dreamless sleep, and upon waking, immediately felt a dull ache coming from his back, as well as heard the sound of multiple people talking. He blinked a few times, taking in the sight of several people sitting on either side of the bed he lay in. All of which he recognized.
“Oh, look. Signs of life. It seems he didn’t burn himself out with all of that mana use after all.” Hayumi said. She and Kazato sat on the right side of the bed, while Axilya, Layne, and Rize sat on his left. A moment passed, and he realized he recognized the room he was in. Zumra’s shop, a back room that would normally be reserved for storage in any other shop. Given that Zumra himself most likely kept all of his supplies in his Storage skill space, he converted it into a resting room.
Leo took a moment to take the sight in, blinking as his vision continued to clear, then he looked to his left. “How long have I been out?”
“A day and a half.” Layne answered. “That’s pretty normal, though. From what I heard, you used a very high amount of mana. Humans aren’t the best at doing that kind of thing right away. Shouldn’t happen as much as you get higher in rank.”
Leo gave a shaky nod, though he had to question the veracity of that when Layne himself was only one rank above him.
“I’m sorry, I probably should have told you.” Layne said, to Leo’s surprise. “There’s so much about this place, the Labors in general, that they just don’t tell you, and I left you to figure it out the hard way.”
“Well, you know, what doesn’t kill you-” Leo started to sit up, but felt a stinging pain in his back that made him immediately fall back against the bed with a groan that interrupted him. “-fuck, that hurts.”
He thought he heard a snicker from the other side, but he didn’t have trouble guessing who it might have been, so he didn’t look. “Here.” Axilya said, leaning forward and handing Leo a potion. “Didn’t want to try giving it to you while you were unconscious.”
He tipped the vial over and gulped down the contents, feeling an immediate relief in his back. Tentatively, he tried sitting up again, and let out a sigh of relief once he could get fully upright. “Thanks, that feels better. Anyway Layne, you basically saved my life back there, so we’ll call it even. Didn’t even think you’d show.” He then turned to Hayumi and Kazato. “Not that I’m completely averse to your presence or anything, but why are you two here?”
“I’m hurt, you don’t think that I would consider your wellbeing enough of a reason to visit.” Hayumi said, holding a mock pout for all of three seconds before she shrugged. “But you are correct that we have ulterior motives. Kazato here wishes to learn that technique she saw your friend use to finish off the matriarch, and I - well, I’d first been interested in your friend here after seeing that fire of hers, but after your display during that fight, you also have my attention. I believe I have quite a bit to offer, especially since you’ve only just arrived from what I understand.”
Well, shit. He’d only just had the conversation with the Seer, but he didn’t expect to discuss this with Hayumi as soon as he woke up. The best he could do was deflect for the moment as he glanced toward Layne with a raised eyebrow.
“I’ve already told her that the art isn’t mine to teach.” Layne said, crossing his arms. “I’ve been meaning to go check up on him after things died down and we made sure you were alright.”
Right, Leo thought. Sir Verakith would have been fighting in his own district of the city, probably directing some of the guards. He glanced back at Kazato, remembered what he saw of her status from right before the fight with the matriarch started. “I guess it makes sense that you’d want to learn something like that, given your class.”
“Her class?” Layne said?
Leo put a hand over his mouth, but Kazato just sighed. “It’s fine, I was going to come up sooner or later. I’m a Sword Saint.”
In glancing back over to Layne, Leo noticed his eyes widened for a moment just before it went back to the even expression he usually kept. “Right, that makes sense. He’ll probably not be happy about it, but people like him are obligated to teach Sword Saints whenever they want to learn.”
More odd knowledge, though Leo didn’t even care to ask Layne how he knew that. He glanced at Rize, whose opinion he also valued on the subject given she was also being sought after. “We’ve talked about it a little. I didn’t want to decide anything without your input. Especially after everything that happened.”
A sigh from Hayumi brought everyone’s attention back to her. “Yes, yes. I will wholeheartedly agree that I was in the wrong. Circumstances prevented most of my scheming in letting the darklings fester from even being relevant, what with the Eldritch Titan attacking Dumatha, but I will agree that the city wouldn’t have fared nearly as well without someone letting the relevant authorities know in advance. Even I didn’t expect to run into something like that matriarch, and as was fully evident during the fight, it wasn’t something I particularly excelled at dealing with. I believe the city’s overwhelming success in evacuating many of the people onto ships in port to reduce casualties, keeping a few Laborers who would have otherwise gone to Dumatha, and overall ensuring the safety of the city led to the world’s status swinging back to Neutral.”
Despite the apparent apology, she still had a somewhat whimsical expression on her face as she spoke, but it changed to a cool and calculated one that made Leo suppress a shudder as her gaze fixed on him. “You have my word that I won’t try to…meddle with affairs on such a grand scale once again, but I do have need of your talents, and I will make sure you are both handsomely rewarded. More so if it will help smooth things over. You need only tell me what you want-.”
“Hey.” Axilya said, leaning forward. “We told you not to pressure him into making a decision as soon as he woke up. We don’t know if the gods came looking and had an effect on his mind.”
“It’s alright, Axilya.” Leo said. He held back a sigh of relief, as that did seem to get Hayumi to back off for the moment. “I got help for that. You’re right though in that I should at least take a day or two to decide. But by the sounds of it, did you guys also have the gods’ attention?”
“From what we can tell, everyone who participated in killing the matriarch got the ‘Equalizer’ title.” Layne answered. “This is also one of the reasons we-” He gestured to himself, Rize, and Axilya, “-were here monitoring you. We didn’t know how your mental state would be when you woke up. Still, though, who helped you?”
“They prefer to remain anonymous.” Leo answered, feeling Hayumi’s gaze on his back. “I did them a favor and they helped me out for it. It shouldn’t be any trouble.” He took a deep breath, and after a moment where he could confirm that Hayumi didn’t seem like she wanted to spill the beans, he continued. “While I have all of you here, though, I want to ask a couple of questions about my stats before I spend the Karma I got from beating the boss.”
At that point, he finally shifted his focus back to the many notifications he had hovering around his head.
You have defeated an A-Rank enemy for the first time! Achievement Reward: A-Rank Unrestricted Karma
Quest Complete!
Defend Normouth (Heroic)
Reward
B-Rank Unrestricted Karma (5)
Quest Complete!
What Lies Below(Urgent)
Reward
A-Rank Unrestricted Karma (2)
Auto Loot Activated
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Items Obtained:
Darkling Matriarch Claws 4x (A Rank) Dark
Darkling Matriarch Stone Heart 1x (A Rank) Earth
Darkling Matriarch Aetherwisp 2x (A Rank) Aether
The remaining space in your Storage is low.
Along with the notifications from earlier, they nearly filled his vision when he brought them back to the fore of his gaze. Finally closing all of them, he brought up his storage and checked his Karma. He had an impressive single C-Rank, five B-Rank, and three A-rank. From what he could tell, he had a tangible reason to raise all of them - even Luck for its ability to give him critical Combines. Still, he very much remembered the advice he’d gotten from the Seer. “What exactly does Intuition do for you when you raise it? This might be important for what I want to do as a Mixer.”
The question hung in the air for a few seconds, which didn’t surprise Leo in the slightest because he’d brought it up out of nowhere. Axilya was the one to answer first. “It improves my senses, kind of? It lets me predict things and then move out of the way without thinking about it because my Reflex is also high.”
“Quite right.” Hayumi added. “It makes you markedly better at getting a good sense for people and situations the more you raise it. It also hones your instincts, allowing you to sense danger, like when you run into something that is a higher rank than you. It also helps you to pick up things relatively quickly, even when you don’t have much experience with them.”
“Right, yeah. I have a skill for swordsmanship, but my Intuition is high enough that I feel like I could pick up any weapon and do alright with it even though I haven’t been trained in anything.” Axilya said.
“My experience is the same, for what it’s worth.” Layne said. “But what have you figured out?”
“Does it have something to do with that unique ability you used to fight the matriarch?” Kazato asked.
“Hmm, that was Oorden’s thing, wasn’t it?” Axilya recalled. “I would’ve asked then and there if we weren’t in the middle of a fight, but how did you…?”
“It was something Zumra told me about.” Leo answered. ”That I could make things to mimic a creature's abilities by combining one of their parts and an Aether material. I still had his heart and his Soul Husk from the tutorial, so I made that. Still, he was right about them being hard to control. Trying it the first time slammed me into a wall, so I couldn’t really use it without Axilya holding me in place.”
“That would have given you Water toxicity, wouldn’t it?” Rize asked.
“I took a cleansing potion right after, so that wasn’t a problem.”
“Not to mention how quickly it drained your mana.” Hayumi said. “I only saw you drinking one to refill, but you collapsed due to mana overuse. It’s less useful of an ability if you can’t control how much mana it uses.”
“Yeah…” He let all of the pieces that they’d laid out float in his mind. Did he have something here? The abilities he could create with Aether would help him immensely but they had several problems, and he still hadn’t figured out how Intuition fit into the mix. He thought back to when first talked about them with Zumra. The elf told Leo that he had trouble making use of the abilities before the time on them ran out, as well as meeting even higher difficulty the higher the rank of them. He ran back the conversation he’d just had, and it brought a question to his mind.
“Hey, Axilya, how’s Zumra’s Intuition?”
“If I remember correctly, most of his stats are around C rank.” She answered. “Although, I think Intuition's one of the last ones that he raised. I’m pretty sure he made sure Intellect, Will, and Luck were that high first.”
“So when he was testing out things as a Mixer, his Intuition wouldn’t have been that high?” Leo asked further. At Axilya’s nod, he continued. “Those abilities I can mimic, they’re things that the monsters have and just ‘know’ how to do. Basically instinctual, right? So if I raised Intuition, wouldn’t that help me figure out how to control them faster and easier?” And preferably without hurting himself.”
“That’s…” Layne looked like he was about to say something, but paused, looking down, deep in thought. “Interesting. The Mixers I’ve talked to never said anything about that. Though they probably all focused on the other stats.” At that, he looked back up to Leo. “It’s worth a shot, I’ll just say don’t spend all of your Karma on Intuition in case it doesn’t work out. From what it sounds like, making those abilities has more problems to work out than just control. It’s also just good practice to spread out your stat boosts.”
“Understood. I could definitely go with more Fortitude.” After Leo answered, he selected the A-Rank Karma. He decided to pump up Intuition to C- for now, so he went to use three of them. Watching with satisfaction as the first one added +8, and the second brought it up to rank D with 6/10. Before he could use the third, a notification he hadn’t seen before popped up.
You have obtained Total Rank E+
Mana Increased!
Skills Upgraded!
New Skill Available!
“Didn’t think I was only one away from ranking up.” Leo noted.
“It was inevitable with that much Karma.” Layne said. “Let me know what skills you’re interested in. There are a few trap options, but if I remember correctly, Mixers have a couple that they want to take as soon as possible.”
“I’m not entirely sure how much you could help. Didn’t you only just reach C-Rank?” Hayumi asked Layne.
“Yeah let me just have a look…” Leo willed the list of available skills to show up, and he got the biggest screen he’d ever seen in front of his face, dwarfing the shop with the sheer number of options he could see at once. There were easily hundreds of options for him to scroll through. Barely thirty seconds of reading through threatened to overwhelm him, so he decided to try to sort them instead to bring out the class exclusive skills, and skills with prerequisite skills that he already had.
Once he was able to read through them, his eyes widened as he looked back at Layne. “I think these might solve a few of my problems.”
Name:
Leonell Bolden
Stats
Title
Equalizer
Fortitude: E (0/10)
Class
Mixer
Reflex: E (0/10)
Element
-
Intellect: E (0/10)
Total Rank
E+
Intuition: D (6/10)
Status
Health 100% Mana 100%
Will: E (0/10)
Skills
Combine, Auto-Loot, Appraise, Storage
Luck: D (5/10)
Skill: Combine
Mix different raw materials into a new item. You choose the shape of the form. Final form is affected by rank and element of materials.
Store Combine results into a mental guidebook that grows based on Intellect rank.
Skill: Auto-Loot (Mixer)
Automatically separates mixable materials from slain creatures. If the [Storage] skill is active, automatically places loot into storage space.
Skill: Appraise (Mixer)
Look at a creature or material and gain information on them. Information includes: Rank, Element, Class, Statuses, Titles. May have difficulty appraising creatures of higher rank, or creatures hidden by another skill or effect. Skill affect boosted by Intuition Rank.
Skill: Storage (Mixer)
Creates an inter-dimensional storage space that only you can access. Storage increases with Total Rank