The unit of [Spice Rum] sat in Max’s hand; he found it almost hard to fathom that a thing so simple, so innocuous, could in fact be so powerful, at least if used correctly, but there it was. Impatient he waited until the effects of the [Basic Gin] wore off.
And then the moment arrived, the advent of his accession to true power, all being in readiness. He checked his statistics, to observe them prior to the moment.
Brawn
7
Endurance
7
Tenacity
7
Agility
6
Nimbleness
5
Intellect
6
Reasoning
6
Grace
3
Appearance
3
Prowess
3
Health (Brawn + Endurance)
14
Mana (Intellect + Reasoning)
12
Stamina (Endurance + Tenacity)
14
Drunkenness (2 x Endurance)
0/14
The he quaffed down one dose of the [Spiced Rum]; just one out of the many he had accumulated. It was, as advertised, spicy and rumy, but had little going for it beyond that. Strange then, that it should be his elixir of youth. His key to immortality. The harbinger of his harem. Warmth flooded through him as the brew took hold.
YOU GAIN 1 BRAWN
YOU GAIN 1 ENDURANCE
YOU GAIN 1 DRUNKENNESS
Once more he looked at his stats, to check out the changes wrought.
Brawn
7+1
Endurance
7+1
Tenacity
7
Agility
6
Nimbleness
5
Intellect
6
Reasoning
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
6
Grace
3
Appearance
3
Prowess
3
Health (Brawn + Endurance)
14+2
Mana (Intellect + Reasoning)
12
Stamina (Endurance + Tenacity)
14+1
Drunkenness (2 x Endurance)
1.5/14+2
Max broke into a quick jig and let out a wild cry of triumph. It worked, it actually worked.
All it had taken was one little thing to be overlooked, one odd mix of choices that no one had remarked upon. Then again, with the hundreds of options that were available, the scores of classes and races and backgrounds, it would be easy to overlook the least important, or valued, of them. They had factored in the [Sailor] background when designing the [Spice Rum], increasing the level of DRUNKENNESS it gave compared to other brews, to compensate for the [Capacity for Grog] trait, but they had overlooked [Stone Stomach]. Perhaps they had never considered anyone would combine the two; there must have been millions of combinations and no one had time to go through all of that, not with an unimportant race like [Proto-Trolls].
He hummed happily, though he did not consider his work done yet. No, not yet. He had a few hundred drinks stored up; that was not enough. Not anywhere near enough.
For the rest of the day he was back to the brewing process, out sweeping the farms and fields for ingredients, brewing up batches of stock, selling the unwanted ones to the merchant in exchange for more [Spice]. The merchant only ever temporarily ran out; it was a simple matter of waiting for the respawn timer to count down before a new batch of [Spice] was available to buy.
The pile of drinks, the mountain of them, grew and grew, and still he worked on, hour by hour, adding to it. And yet more it grew.
Finally Max considered the pile - the mountain - to be sufficient, for now.
And so he began to drink, and drink, and drink.
His body began to swell with the sheer power that swept through him, muscles rippling and then muscles blooming upon muscles. Never had he experienced anything like it, the sheer sense of being so strong, so mighty, so not mundane. It was intoxicating, and it had nothing to do with alcohol.
He lost track of how many he had had by about the four hundredth drink, feeling none the worse for wear for it. Technically he should be dead, with more alcohol in his body than blood, but the System had to play by the rules it had established, and those rules said he wasn't impaired by the booze, and wouldn’t be. Ever.
His new statistics were looking rather impressive, though.
Brawn
7+402
Endurance
7+402
Tenacity
7
Agility
6
Nimbleness
5
Intellect
6
Reasoning
6
Grace
3
Appearance
3
Prowess
3
Health (Brawn + Endurance)
14+804
Mana (Intellect + Reasoning)
12
Stamina (Endurance + Tenacity)
14+402
Drunkenness (2 x Endurance)
603/14+804
Just to top it all off, he drank a dose of [Basic Firewater] so that anything he did now would cause not PHYSICAL damage but FIRE damage.
He could just go out there and punch things to death easily now, but the alcoholic boosts wouldn’t last long enough to really make use of it. No, there was an easy way, one where he didn't even have to move.
“[Troll Quake!]” He bellowed it out and unleashed a mighty stomp upon the ground.
The ground shook at the impact of his strike, the force rippling outwards, cracks appearing that radiated from him. A ring of fire swept through the cracks and still the force cascaded onwards until the mountains around the valley shook with the force of it. The buildings around him swayed as the earth shuddered and the Proto-Trolls gasped and milled about in confusion. Never before had one unleashed a [Troll Quake!] of such strength, such power, such magnificence.
YOU DEAL 84 FIRE DAMAGE
It didn’t sound a lot, for all the effort he had put into it, but there was nothing in the starter zone that could take that much, and thanks to his swollen BRAWN, he could hit everything in a very large radius around him, and so everything, whether hostile mobs or neutral died, burned to a crisp. Goblins, skeletons, boars, bears, the Leech Queen’s minions, rabbits, no matter what it was, they all perished, even the mobs that were too high for him, and the XP flooded back into him, all at once.
DING. YOU GAIN A LEVEL
DING. YOU GAIN A LEVEL
DING. YOU GAIN A LEVEL
DING. YOU GAIN A LEVEL
DING. YOU GAIN A LEVEL
And on it went.
Max laughed at his triumph. It was only the beginning. First the starting zone, next the world.
*******
“What was that?” The stand-in-System (aka Dave), looked up from wrestling with a particularly tricky report, on events transpiring in the Sunken Continent of Eio’ua. The fishmen that lived there were apparently staging a blockade, not allowing any more visitors to visit their fabulous coral city on account of, as the report quoted, ‘repeated efforts to turn them into fish stew because of recent changes to the cooking profession’.
A harried sub-system, the Crown Prince of Crickets, the Lord of Locusts (aka Phil), came scurrying over, loaded down with reports. He looked tired, and Dave couldn’t blame him, even if, technically, they couldn’t get tired. “What was what?”
“Did you not feel it?” Dave asked, brow creased. “It was as if a thousand starting mobs all cried out at once and were then silenced.”
“Can’t say that I did.”
“Something is wrong,” Dave frowned. “Something is very wrong. And I intend to find out just what it is.”