“So, what is a UCL?” Alarion asked as the pair wound their way further inland.
“Really?”
He glanced back over his shoulder to see Sierra giving him an incredulous look. “You don’t know?”
Her expression darkened further. “Of course I know. But you can not be serious.”
Confusion was all too evident on his face as the young man slowed his pace to focus on her.
“Ah. You are.” She scowled. “First you threaten me. Then you stomp off ahead of me for ten minutes without a word of apology. And now you are asking questions as though none of that happened?”
“You told me to manage my anger.” Alarion responded with a frown. “It took a while, but I’ve managed it.”
“That was not-”
“I’m sorry.” He interjected. “I don’t like being hurt.”
Looking at his expression, Sierra knew that Alarion wasn’t only talking about the flesh wound the fiend had inflicted.
“I knew you could handle it.” She replied.
Though the words sounded hollow in her ears, they seemed to resonate with Alarion, his dark expression lightening ever so slightly. He tipped his head in acknowledgement, turned, and took the lead once more.
Sierra quickened her pace, more comfortable closing the gap between them after his apology. “Since I am sure you want an explanation, here it is, fiends have a core. Usually in the chest cavity. They will not die unless it is broken.”
“Why did it stop moving when I cut its head off?” Alarion asked, squinting through the tree-line in search of more fiends.
“They still have HP like you or I.” Sierra explained. “Taking this one’s head was enough to empty its entire HP pool, but running out of HP does not kill a fiend. They regenerate very quickly when below zero HP, enough to regain consciousness and rejoin the fight, then much more slowly after that. If you left it alone it would eventually regrow its entire body, though if it were anything other than the weakest type it would lose levels or even a rank to do so.”
“So focus on the chest.”
She shook her head, then appeared to immediately reconsider the gesture. “For most people, no. Breaking the core of a fiend you aren’t dominating in combat is difficult. I can not do it in one strike. For most, it is easier to defeat the fiend traditionally and then deliver a coup de grace while it recovers. In a pitched battle, subjugation teams usually have one or more members on clearing duty. You, on the other hand, might have slightly better luck. Especially with these ones.”
Of all the things Sierra could have said, those words alone seemed to mollify the worst of Alarion’s ill temper. Small daggers chipping away at a target? No. Enormous sword pulverizing it in one hit? Yes.
“And UCL?” He asked, bringing their recent conversation full circle.
“Unified Class Level.” Sierra explained. “It is a rough estimate of overall power provided by the system. An extremely rough estimate you should never rely on. What was the UCL on that fiend?”
“Twenty.”
“And you should have a UCL of ten, to put things in perspective.” She continued. “At its most basic, for someone with a single class, UCL is purely additive. One per level in Rank I classes, three per level in Rank II, nine per level in Rank III and so forth. You have one level in your rank I class, and another three in a rank II, so yours would be ten.”
“So it was twice my level?” Alarion asked, his head tipped back to stare up at the canopy as he considered the implications. “Even though it was so weak.”
Sierra laughed. “Which is why you should never use it as anything but the most rough estimate of strength. It does not account for the rarity of the classes involved, their skills, items, or even simple combat training.”
“What use is it, then?” He inquired.
“Well it factors heavily into how much experience you receive, which is fairly critical. Your UCL also limits the amounts of certain magical gear you can have equipped at any one time. Not that this matters to you for now.” Sierra shrugged. “You can pin it to your general status as something to keep in mind. You would think it would be easy to keep track of, since it is simple addition, but that goes out the window once you have more than one class. It weighs additional classes as worth less, since even an awakened talented at many arts can only do so many things at a time. Likewise it will weigh crafting classes lower, which gets even stranger if you start to mix the two.”
“Keep number low, try to fight things with a higher number. But not too high or I may die.” Alarion summarized.
“You have got it.” She confirmed with a snort of bemusement. “And ask an Ordinate if you actually care for the details. I am told they keep volumes full of tables trying to reconstruct the system’s choices.”
Alarion nodded along with her suggestion, then took the opportunity provided by the lull in conversation to pull up his Status.
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General Information
Name - Alarion
Species - Human
Sex - Male
Age – Fifteen Years
HP – 200/200 [+0.0069/sec]
MP – 136/136 [+0.024/sec]
Stamina – 199/199 [+0.495/sec]
Aptitude - 238%
UCL – 10
Attributes
STR - 32
AGI- 40
VIT – 39
INT – 32
PER – 48
WIL – 24
LUK – 213
Classes Known
Orphan - Level 3 - Progress – 87%
Survivor - Level 1 - Progress - MAX
General Skills Known
Stealth - Level 3 - Progress - 3%
Detection - Level 4 - Progress - 19%
Thrown Weapon Mastery - Level 5 - Progress - 28%
Imperial Greatsword Mastery – Level 3 – Progress 8%
Class Skills Known
Survivor’s Endurance – Level 5 – Progress 62%
Self-Motivated – Level 2 – Progress -82% (No Daily Use Available)
Traits and Feats of Strength
Avian Bane - Rank I
Flaws
Unknown – Major
Unknown – Moderate
Single-Minded– Minor (Focus: Imperial Greatsword Mastery)
To say that his growth over the past six weeks had been impressive would have been an understatement. He’d gained (or at least chosen) two skills, and leveled up each and every one of those he had. Most of them multiple times. The growths in his stats were likewise respectable, with his luck now exceeding two hundred and his lagging vitality driven up to his second highest stat by virtue of Survivor's Endurance.
That he’d had to endure considerable abuse in order to level that skill up so quickly was, in his opinion, a small price to pay. Particularly given that all his memories of the trials he had endured were little more than indistinct thoughts of general discomfort.
It wasn’t all good, however. While his skills had grown, his class had not. His Orphan class remained locked at the same stubborn 87% where it had sat for months, ever since he’d first seen his status. It could increase, the very fact that he’d gained two previous levels told Alarion it was possible, but the number would not budge. Both Alarion and ZEKE had hoped that practical experience might have moved the needle but he was fairly sure that his tutor's initial guess would prove to be correct.
The Orphan class required him to be alone to obtain it. It wouldn’t grow with a babysitter.
That left his burgeoning combat class to look forward to. Alarion could feel he was close to something. He’d been told that someone with an aptitude of 100 could typically expect to obtain their first class level after roughly three years of hard training. Examples of aptitude as high as his were rare, but three months was not out of the question for someone with an aptitude of 200. With practical combat experience, that number would drop even lower.
He would obtain his class on this island. Alarion was sure of it. So sure of it, in fact, that the system prompted him with a quest:
> Reaching New Heights
>
> Description: You have trained, you have bled, you have struggled. Now is the time to take the prize you have rightfully earned.
>
> Success Conditions: Solidify your understanding of martial technique by gaining one level in a martial focused combat class.
>
> Failure Conditions: Fail to meet success conditions within three weeks. Leave the island without meeting success conditions.
>
> Reward: Increase the rarity of the selected class. One Exceptional Class Box.
>
> Penalty: Lose all progress toward a martial focused combat class. Block all progress toward a martial focused combat class for 60 days.
>
> Note: This quest was automatically assigned due to the flaw [Single-Minded] and does not count against the once-per-day limit of Self-Motivated.
It was eerie, the way the System could read his mind. It had done the same thing when it selected the skill and gave him his first quest, drawing on his overwhelming desire for one solitary thing and urging him on with further motivation.
As if he needed it.
According to ZEKE, this was the best sort of flaw-assigned quest he could hope for from his skill. The type that would reward him for what he intended to do already. Penalties for failure, even the severe sort that his flaw had saddled him with, didn’t really matter. The real world implications of him failing to obtain a class on the island were dire enough as it was. Mutilation. Death. Stagnation. Losing all of his progress would be mere insult to literal injury.
The quests to be concerned about, by contrast, fell into two camps. The first were the impossible. If he set his mind to a task he couldn’t complete, the system might still oblige him with a quest, and punish him for failure all the same. They’d had little time to work on the subject amidst all his other training, but the Steelborn had given Alarion a few mental exercises to practice in an attempt to temper his worst impulses.
The second were quests that were uncomplementary. Two quests with exclusive and intensive tasks running on the same timer, or quests that sent him in wildly opposite directions. From ZEKE’s understanding, the system did not necessarily take his existing quests into account when it offered or assigned, new ones. It was possible to end up with two tasks that were mutually exclusive, or so difficult to manage that they might as well have been. Being forced to decide which reward to pursue was bad enough, but the sadistic choice of which punishment to endure was even worse.
Fortunately, this was not one of those cases.
> Hunting Season
>
> Description: Others might find the idea of hunting fiends a laughable and dangerous proposition. For you, it is a reality.
>
> Success Conditions: Destroy as many fiends as possible during your training expedition. The rewards for this quest will vary depending on the number and combat strength of defeated fiends.
>
> Update: This quest now tracks the total UCL of defeated fiends.
>
> Failure Conditions: Fail to meet success conditions within three weeks. Leave the island without meeting success conditions.
>
> Minimum Reward: One Common Fiend Slayer Box.
>
> Penalty: None.
>
> Current number of fiends destroyed: 1
>
> Current total UCL of fiends destroyed: 20
In truth, the system could scarcely have selected a more complementary quest if Alarion had been allowed to give his direct input. His hunting would reward him with progress toward both quests, and once he completed Reaching New Heights the combat class he earned should allow him to hunt stronger fiends. That would further increase the reward when it finally came time to cash in on Hunting Season.
“Good news?” Sierra asked.
“Hmm?” Alarion replied, momentarily confused.
“I can not see your status, but I can tell when you are looking at it.” She explained. “Your eyes focus on nothing and you look quite serious.”
He frowned.
“It is fine. Everyone does it when they are newly awakened. I still do it if I am not thinking.” She consoled him. “It is a bad habit to get into, since it all but screams you are vulnerable. But it is an easy one to break. What was the news? You were not smiling enough for it to be your class, so… a quest?”
Alarion wasn’t quite sure he liked how often his mind was being read as of late.