After Leo said his farewells to Kylyhagaard he found himself falling through darkness and before he knew it he was standing in a field of what appeared to be crops. Each sapling placed neatly in evenly spaced rows.
This puzzled him as he was told that he should be arriving in a newly created world where the rest of the humans and other races should have gone after the Tutorial. Before he could stress himself anymore he heard the voice, ‘Just get situated and prepared before panicking. Wait until you know what your situation is, then you can panic.’
“You know what voice in my head, you’re right. There’s no reason to panic, especially when I’m standing in this beautiful field of alien crops.”
As he was admiring the beauty of nature the motion sickness finally caught up with him and he found himself bent over releasing what little food he had left all over the nearest plant.
“At least it has food now.” he joked to himself, feeling a bit better now that the sickness had faded.
He checked his weapons but froze when he found nothing but the scraps of his clothes. Not even his backpack was with him. Panic began to settle in until he remembered that maybe there was an inventory system.
“Inventory” he spoke aloud and a grid-like screen appeared in his vision, but to his dismay it was empty.
“I guess I lost my gear. Do I still have my magic?” he thought out loud. When he searched for his mana it was there in his body, but now it was so much more. He summoned a blue fireball and shot it into the air to confirm it still felt the same. ‘It is a bit easier than I remember.’
Looking up at the sky he saw that it was mid day before he noticed a blue box in the corner of his vision blinking. Commanding it to open he found numerous blue screens waiting for him.
Congratulations for completing The Waves. For your stellar accomplishments here are your rewards.
Title Granted: Survivor of The Waves
As one of the elite few, of newly integrated beings to have survived The Waves you have been given privileged access to the System Shop annually.
Bonus: You gain an additional 50% to experience gained from killing monsters, ???, ???, and an additional 50% to experience earned on Dungeon Worlds.
Condition: You will lose access to this Title until the currently assigned System Quest is completed. You will have until the Quest has expired to complete it otherwise the Title will be lost until you complete the next System Quest assigned.
Status Screen Unlocked.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Name: Leo Flowers Race: Human Class: None Level: 1 (0/100) Health: 126 Regen: 48/hr Mana: 1800 Regen: 105/hr Stamina: 120 Regen: 54/hr Strength: 6 Constitution: 6 Agility: 7 Endurance: 7 Intelligence: 12 Wisdom: 10 Perception: 11 Soul: 15 Titles: Survivor of The Waves
Traits: Mana Lake lvl 1, Soul Split lvl 1
Skills: Mana Manipulation lvl 1, Fireball lvl 1, Flamethrower lvl 1, Kinetic Push lvl 1 Lines: None
Experience: 2,033,000
Stat Points: 3
“I finally get to see my status screen huh. It actually looks quite pathetic compared to what I went through.” he finished with a sigh. “Now let’s see what everything does.” as he read through the help screens for each stat.
Strength: This stat affects how much weight you can lift and how much force your strikes can exert. Minorly affects how much health you have.
Constitution: This stat affects how much health you have and how much damage you take from various attacks. Also affects health regeneration and stamina regeneration.
Endurance: This stat affects how much damage your body can endure and how survivable it is. Also affects health regeneration and stamina regeneration.
Agility: This stat affects how quickly your body can move.
Intelligence: This stat affects how much damage spells do and minorly affects mana pool.
Wisdom: This stat affects how much mana you have. Also affects mana regeneration and mana channeling.
Perception: This stat affects how much you see and your ability to process what you see.
Soul: This stat affects how much mana you have and how fast you can channel mana. Also how much mana you regenerate.
He commanded the screen to show him how much experience it would take to level his Intelligence and the screens before him changed.
Intelligence: 12
1,833 experience to next level.
Would you like to level Intelligence?
Yes/No
He selected ‘Yes’ and waited to see if he felt any different and when he didn’t feel anything he checked how much it would cost for the next level.
Intelligence: 13
2,107 experience to next level.
Would you like to level Intelligence?
Yes/No
He selected ‘Yes’ and checked his status screen for any other noticeable changes.
Name: Leo Flowers Race: Human Class: None Level: 1 (0/100) Health: 126 Regen: 48/hr Mana: 1800 Regen: 105/hr Stamina: 120 Regen: 54/hr Strength: 6 Constitution: 6 Agility: 7 Endurance: 7 Intelligence: 14 Wisdom: 10 Perception: 11 Soul: 15 Titles: Survivor of The Waves
Traits: Mana Lake lvl 1, Soul Split lvl 1
Skills: Mana Manipulation lvl 1, Fireball lvl 1, Flamethrower lvl 1, Kinetic Push lvl 1 Lines: None
Experience: 2,029,060
Stat Points: 3
‘Only my mana changed visibly. Since the cost of stats grows quite rapidly I want to get as many free stat points as possible. I also want to decide what path I will be taking for my main fighting style.’
To confirm that the two Traits he picked up in the System Shop transferred properly he opened up their screens.
Soul Split:
Grants the ability to sacrifice (500 * number of extra souls) base mana and 50% of your current stats to split your soul in two. All experience, skills, titles, Lines, and quests gained will be shared equally across all souls. Health and Mana will be separate to each soul. When one soul dies stats across all souls will be reduced by 20% and a 1 year cooldown will be placed on Soul Split.
Current souls active: 1
Grants 5 + (.5 * skill level) maximum mana multiplier applied after all other mana buffs.
Since all his weapons were gone his only option was magic. Leo started to think about what he would need and how he should go about fighting if he was to only use his current magical loadout.
He came to the conclusion that he should go mostly magical stats along with some Agility and Endurance because he was going to be running a lot to keep his distance from his enemies as he did not have a spell for it yet.
As he was looking over his Status Screen again he noticed that the Lines category now contained items. He selected the Starter option but nothing happened. Puzzled he called out “Lines help” and a help screen appeared.
Lines are special branches of power that offer potentially greater rewards than stats and classes or they could be less. Lines are offered based on someone’s actions and achievements and usually the greater the achievement the greater the power boost. Line points can be acquired through System Quests, and achievements towards the end of a specific Line. Experience points can be used at a 10:1 ratio to complete a Line. Typical Line rewards are stats and skills.
Wanting to test the rewards from completing a Line Leo placed 1000 experience points into Starter and he was greeted with surprising returns.
Starter Line completed.
As you start your path through the System a small boon is given to help you through your struggles.
Plus 3 free stat points.
The reward brought a smile to Leo’s face and a fist pump to the air.
He wanted to immediately finish the other Lines, but paused because he didn’t want to gain automatically assigned stat points for free at such low levels.
First he spent 100xp to level up and he gained 2 stat points.
This confirmed that it didn’t matter when you leveled up as long as you didn’t spend the stats meaninglessly. He finished leveling himself to 9 before stopping.
‘I need to gather more information about classes before I level to 10 to make sure I do the most to ensure I have the best chances of getting a good class.’
Next on Leo’s list was getting his stats to the point where he could cast Soul Split once and if everything checked out, twice.
It cost him 5431 xp to get his Soul to 25 and base mana to 510. After a few breaths he activated Soul Split and waited. He was half expecting his vision to be split between two sets of eyes, but when he opened them he just saw a naked reflection of himself staring back at him.
1.”Hello me?”
2.”Hello, other me.”
Both of them jumped before the first Leo continued his inspection into his other soul.
1.“So can you hear what I’m thinking?”
2.”Nope. Can you feel this?” the second one said before punching himself.
Soon after first Leo saw a blinking red outline of a body. When he clicked on it he got a notification.
Warning: Soul #2 has taken -1 damage.
1.”I just got a notification saying you took one damage.”
2.”That’s helpful. What should we be calling each other and our future selves?”
1.”I was thinking Leo then just which number soul you are. So I’d be Leo-1 and you’d be Leo-2.”
2.”That makes sense. What do you say we level those stats so we aren’t sitting at 70 hp.” he said grinning at himself.
1.”Should we just get the minimum required and then split again?”
2.”I don’t see why not although let’s try and get to 4 souls and see how many points we have left. We don’t know where we are and the extra manpower may be needed.”