Child Stage has ended.

Primary Tasks completed.

Optional Task incomplete. Gestalt jobs locked.

Body Orb remaining. Applying to random applicable stat. Vitality selected.

As before, Gi’s consciousness had returned to that sea of white. Completely alone except for the words in front of him. His emotions were muted here. All of his instincts had taken a back seat and now what he was left with was just himself. The weight of his failure despite having Danna's borrowed strength hung with him. The Father's words dragged him further into despair.

Was this truly it for him? Gestalt jobs being locked from his failure reinforced the thought that he was behind the other greats - monsters like the Eldritch Leader and their Elites. Now he was even further behind and in an even bigger world if Hillin was to be believed. Why had Danna saved him if this was as far as he could go? It felt like a pressure wearing down on him.

As awful as he felt, what he truly wanted more than anything was Danna to be there. Not just a vision, but actually there beside him. It didn’t make any sense. She was a goddess and he was a pathetic monster, but that’s what his heart yearned for. The vision that appeared wasn’t what he truly wanted, but it still helped.

“What do you mean?” the dopey follower asked incredulously. He sat on the side of the bed, his shoulders hunched. Danna sat next to him partially cross-legged with the other leg dangling off the side of the bed. She tucked one strand of her dark hair behind her ear, though no part of her from baggy t-shirt to hair looked out of place.

“Come on, let’s shit talk this person that made you upset!”

“You’re the person that made me upset, Danna!”

“Oh Danna, eh? Yeah, she can be a real dickhead. She’s really stubborn and always says exactly what she’s thinking.”

The follower stared at her for a long moment as he tried to figure out what exactly what she was doing, but it became clear that he just decided to play along. “Sometimes when I’m trying to figure something out, Danna just blasts out answers without even listening to me. Like I understand that she knows better about what a healthy relationship looks like, but that doesn’t mean she’s an expert in how I feel. If she just throws out a solution without taking in what I say, that’s not a workable solution, right?”

“What an asshole!” Danna said. If it was anyone else, it would have been sarcastic. It would have seemed like she was making light of the follower’s feelings, but she wasn’t. At this moment in his life, he didn’t have anyone else close enough to talk about this with so she was being that person for him. Even if the person he needed to vent about was herself. “I’d be so pissed if I was trying to work through things and someone didn’t listen to me.”

“Yeah, it really ticked me off,” The follower said, a small smile playing about his lips. “Like, who does she think she is? Why can’t we figure something out together? Even if it’s exactly what she’d have said anyways, right?”

“Exactly! Should we go toilet paper her house?”

The vision ended, but Danna had given Gi the ability to really feel what the follower was feeling. The frustration and anger and the slow acceptance that Danna had given him exactly what he needed because she cared about him. It didn’t directly translate to his situation, but it made him feel better somehow. Danna cared about him during his ups and downs. She cared about him when he’d lost himself in the Eldritch Forest and she cared for the follower even when he was angry at her. She was so… accepting.

Visualizing a deep breath, Gi refocused his efforts on the task at hand. Those heavy feelings weren’t over, but he felt better enough to put them to the side for now. He looked over the words before him.

Choose Job: Fighter / Rogue / Cleric / Sorcerer / Diver (Up to 1)

From Danna’s knowledge, all of them seemed to be standard except for Diver. Fighters fought, rogues snuck, clerics prayed, and sorcerers used magic. Diver it turned out was more of a specialized Fighter job for underwater. After selecting it, he received a short explanation.

Divers are explorers and warriors of the sea. They get more skills related to being or fighting underwater and are much more specialized towards that. Many of their skills won’t translate well onto land, but that doesn’t mean they’re worthless either. Divers are a martial job. (Available due to having a swim speed.)

From what Gi could gather, different traits might open up different jobs. If they were like Diver, they wouldn’t necessarily be more powerful all around, but better suited for different environments or approaches to fighting. Fighter, Rogue, and Diver were all considered martial jobs, Sorcerer was arcane, and Cleric was divine. As he clicked through each of them, he realized that he’d actually unlocked all of them despite the standard looking array. [Stealth] trait for Rogue, [Borrow my Strength] for Cleric, and [Arcane Bolt] for Sorcerer. Fighter seemed to only be from having made a kill which sounded like something anyone could do.

“But what to choose?” Gi asked himself. What would help Danna the most? Cleric seemed like the obvious choice there, but would a martial job make him more powerful like the Weresnake? Or maybe he could be some type of Sorcerer like the Eldritch Leader?

He sighed. If he was honest with himself, the martial jobs were probably not a good fit. He only had one arm and his Strength stat had lost parity with his Agility and Wisdom. Maybe if he could have done a gestalt Fighter/Arcane job that might have worked well, but he felt like he’d be at a disadvantage. That left Sorcerer and Cleric. Out of those two, Gi was really leaning towards Cleric. He selected it to see what would come up.

Clerics are devout monsters that draw their strength from their connection to a god. Unlike many other common jobs, Clerics vary slightly depending on which god you follow. Due to this, some Clerics may look like traditional healers while others may be melee fighters. (Available due to having a Divine Seed.)

Sounded pretty good so far.

Use Soul Orbs to learn skills or convert traits to skills? 30/30

Confused, he tried to will more information from the system and thankfully, it worked.

Converting traits to skills is the main way that monsters grow from their foundation as they move into the Adolescent Stage. These converted traits won’t take up one of your six skill slots per job and will be converted to a skill that complements your selected job. Your traits' functions will only improve when being converted to skills.

That was amazing! He thought he’d been screwed when he’d missed out on the gestalt jobs, but if his traits were getting improved then his success in the Infancy Stage meant that his foundations might not be as hurt as he thought! Overall, he was very satisfied with his traits. Excitedly, he dug into the conversion panel.

Prime Traits:

Intelligence (Inherited)

Boss (Unique) -> Bishop (5)

Borrow My Strength(Unique) -> Danna's Conduit (4)

Traits:

Stealth -> Concealing Light (5)

Speed Boost -> Celerity (3)

Arcane Bolt -> Divine Bolt (2)

Swim Speed -> Merfolk's Blessing (2)

Rally

He could convert all his traits except for his Inherited one and the reward trait he'd gotten for achieving his Focus. That one still didn't have a lot of use for him and it seemed strange that it didn't improve. It specifically listed Danna's followers in the description.

At a cost of 21 for the others though, it would eat into most of his Orbs, but he felt it was worth it. If he had a limited number of skill slots and these didn’t fill those, he bet he could learn some more once he was truly in the Adolescent Stage. Still, he wanted some more descriptions on what those converted skills meant and what the options were for regular job skills.

Cleric Skill List

* Religion

* Persuasion

* Scribe

* Light Armor

Church of Danna Skill List

* Athletics

* Persuasion

* Swim

* Blunt Weapons

Converted Descriptions

* Bishop -> Summons a Cleric to fight for you for 20 seconds

* Danna's Conduit -> Allows you to better hear the Will of Danna

* Concealing Light -> Limited Invisibility; Slight shimmer during the day that is more obvious at night

* Celerity -> Increase movement speed by a variable amount; Improves balance

* Divine Bolt -> Launches a divine bolt (light aspect)

* Merfolk's Blessing -> Improves Swim Speed further and allows for limited underwater breathing

Those sounded much better than he'd hoped even! To compare, he flipped back to Sorcerer, but while similar, it wasn’t as good. [Speed Boost], [Swim], and [Borrow my Strength] couldn't even convert. The martial jobs were even worse with only [Speed Boost] and [Stealth] actually converting. Though, Fighter did convert [Boss] to a "Commander" skill that functioned similarly to [Bishop] and Diver had an similar underwater breathing skill but more permanent.

Feeling better about his first choice, he switched everything back to Cleric and used his last nine points to select three generic skills. He looked at his current build.

Name: Gi

Race: Gang Otter (Head Priest - E)

Stats

Strength - F+

Agility - D (Capped)

Vitality - E

Wisdom - D (Capped)

Traits:

Intelligence(Inherited)

Rally

Trait Skills:

* Bishop (D)

* Danna's Conduit (D)

* Concealing Light (D)

* Celerity (E+)

* Divine Bolt (E)

* Merfolk's Blessing (E)

Skills

* Religion (E)

* Light Armor (E)

* Persuasion (E)

Without having the Gestalt job, he figured he’d picked as well as he could. Honestly, it felt like the Cleric job had been tailor made to him. Perhaps Danna was still helping him out even though he had failed? The new sheet did add some questions about capped stats, but the system didn’t provide any more information on that. The fact that the skills were all graded made him confident that he’d be able to upgrade them even further somehow.

It wasn't perfect obviously. He wondered if he could have directed the path of the converted skills better with a gestalt job and he recalled getting additional Evolution points for achieving the bonus task in the Infancy Stage. Would he have been able to more easily tweak his build? Or would he have gotten bonuses in spots where his jobs overlapped? At this point, he didn't know and was mostly satisfied with what he selected. Lacking a melee skill seemed a weakness, but what could he do?

With only few lingering doubts, he accepted his changes and a new selection popped up.

Create Subgenitor?

He had no idea what that meant. So he pulled the system for more information. Despite the few blocks that he’d gotten, it felt like the system was understanding what he needed better and was more helpful for explaining over all. Was he starting to understand it better? Or maybe the system was reacting to him as he grew in power?

While a Progenitor is the starting point of a clan or species, the Subgenitor is the direct follower of the Progenitor and the true birth of a species or a clan. By not creating a Subgenitor, you can instead pour those resources into yourself adding a half step to all stats. This increase will not be blocked by any caps.

This was a much harder decision than the job had been. It all stemmed from the feelings of weakness that he had from the fight in the Eldritch Forest. Should he simply make himself stronger? That may ruin the foundation of his species, but if he was strong enough, would it matter?

What was his true goal? Personal strength… or his Family?

As much as it pained him physically, he opted to create the Subgenitor. Missing out on the increased stats only twisted the knife of his own weakness, but he hoped that having more people he could trust would be better in the long run. As strong as the Eldritch monsters had been, they’d been defeated by a group of monsters much weaker than themselves.

After confirming his last choice, his consciousness faded back to a comfortable stillness while his essence shifted towards what awaited him in the next Stage.