Aiko looked at the screen and ran through the descriptions in her head again before she closed out of the system window. Health was described as a general assessment of her body’s ability to take damage and the smaller a body the less damage it could take overall. Also, the color of the bar would indicate certain statuses and the yellow-green of her bar was an indication of her recovering from sickness.
The rest of the stats were all based around her physical or mental abilities as well. Strength was a general read of her muscular strength which was why it was so low. Both her speed and dexterity were higher, meaning she should run instead of fight things. Her speed was also low because of her general size apparently but her dexterity was a measure of how limber she was so it wasn’t affected that way. Her stamina was how long she could keep on doing things and was the last of her physical stats.
Aiko had discovered the intelligence stat was meant to be her ability to make sense of situations and information. Her memory and creativity stats were pretty self-explanatory. Except for one line in creativity where it mentioned the ability to come up with different ways to approach problems.
The part that she didn’t understand at all was the mana stuff. Apparently, mana was some stuff that people had that could make weird things happen for them. Aiko studied the mana conductivity stat’s description again.
Mana Conductivity is the representation of how well mana can be channeled through the subject. The higher the value, the more mana may be channeled through at once. Combined with an adequately large mana pool, this stat will allow the wielder to cast larger and more powerful mana-related effects such as spells or blessings. Unlike a subject’s mana pool, mana conductivity cannot be improved without the blessing of a deity.
Aiko had no idea what any of it meant but she had a vague notion that it was somehow really neat. She looked at the number beside the stat and wondered again, what good a 175 in the stat was.
Her mana pool was okay but it wasn’t that large. It was the amount of mana held within an individual. Apparently, it could be improved through constant use and draining. Aiko wondered if that required one of those mana-related effects.
The next stat was terribly low but Aiko could tell that it was accurate. She had almost no confidence, no matter what it pertained to. She wondered for a second if maybe it would improve. She also wondered if attractiveness was actually measured correctly. She really didn’t feel that attractive. However, since it was a measure of physical attractiveness to others, perhaps she was and that was the reason that things always seemed to want to eat her in her dreams.
After looking at that she looked at the description of the skills, starting with alertness II. This skill boosts a subject’s awareness based on information gained from the senses by a percentage of the intelligence stat. This skill gives a boost of fifty percent of the intelligence stat to all senses in use for a limited duration.
Next up was climbing III. This skill gives a boost to the wielder’s endurance when performing climbing. This advanced variant allows the wielder to quarter their endurance usage when climbing any surface that isn’t overhead and halves endurance used when climbing on overhead surfaces. Aiko could remember never being that tired after climbing and now she understood why.
She looked at evasion II. This skill allows the subject to use a small burst of endurance to gain more dexterity when in a fight. This variant takes 10% of base endurance and lasts twice as long. She remembered doing that at the feet of the beaver-dwarf guy. Aiko was surprised once again as her mind suddenly provided names for things that she didn’t know she knew.
Aiko next took a look at jumping III. This skill allows the wielder to increase the height or length of their jumps by a percentage of their strength stat at the cost of increased endurance drain. At this level, this skill will triple again the height or length of a jump and increase endurance usage by 5%.
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Aiko glossed over listening II and scent I. She was too eager to look at the abilities and blessings sections. She knew that she wasn’t going to get anything from her last gift or blessing thing but that still left the other one.
First, Aiko looked at the abilities section. She opened the description of spatial awareness. This ability allows the user to perceive the area around them from every angle. With practice, this ability can be used with every one of the senses. After enough practice or under special conditions, the wielder may learn to perceive their surroundings without the use of any of the senses.
Aiko read the description again and then a third time. How would that work? How does somebody sense the world without senses? Weird but neat! It even said that it could be practiced to gain better use. She nodded to herself that she was going to practice with this ability a lot.
Now Aiko approached one of the two descriptions she had the least understanding of. This chaos magic affinity was a complete unknown to her. She had to admit to herself that she was more than a little bit curious about it and even a bit excited.
She read the description of chaos magic affinity while unconsciously holding her breath. This affinity allows the wielder to learn chaos magic at an accelerated rate. The exact rate of learning depends on the intelligence, creativity, mana conductivity, mana pool, and to a lesser extent memory stats. That was all the description said.
She was furious and was aggressively thinking mean things while demanding to know what chaos magic was. Just as her eyes landed on the word in the affinity’s description, a new description opened over the top of that one. She didn’t even know that she could do that and was so surprised by it that she just stared dumbly at it for a moment before even reading the description. She did vaguely remember something about almost every word having a description.
The description for chaos magic was brief but informative. This type of magic is the most versatile type. It allows a wielder to judge what’s needed in a given situation, then imagine an effect and focus mana into a construct or effect to fit that need. The use of this magic is taxing on the wielder’s mana pool and requires a larger mana conductivity than any other type of magic to activate the chaotic spells the wielder creates. If certain effects or constructs are used often enough, the wielder will gain a spell in their spells section and this spell will be easier to cast and cost a bit less mana.
Aiko skimmed over the omniglot-chosen ability. She already figured out that it was what let her speak to the elves and what told her what things were. She looked at the chosen part but it just said chosen by a deity.
Aiko looked at the first (was this a gift or a blessing?), holy magic. The description opened and at first, she was left confused but as she read it a second time, she could feel her heart racing. This kind of magic is the gift of a deity and will make the magic of the wielder much better at their magic. This has the inherent effect of making the magic cast cost much less per spell cast. It also gives the wielder hints about new spells as they progress in their trek through the study and artistry of magic.
Holy magic will disappear from blessings and appear as the beginning of the type of magic that was gifted when the first spell is cast. May Kaori bless all through her divine will! What an awesome gift!
Aiko looked at her last gift or blessing but ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ still didn’t reveal much. There was a description but each word was hidden just like the two in the name of the thing. That was unhelpful.
Still, she couldn’t contain her excitement at the prospect of being able to fix any problem she came across with this magic stuff. Or was it called mana? She was still thinking how awesome this was as she closed out of her system!
As Aiko looked around, she noticed that very few of the elves were done looking through their systems. That excluded the children of course. She realized after watching the eye movements of several of the villagers that they were extremely slow at reading. She wondered at that but eventually shrugged it off as inconsequential.
Out of the corner of her eye, Aiko spotted a couple of the children playing near the fire. They were chasing one another and kept darting between the distracted adults. Aiko watched them for a bit longer and was about to turn away when she noticed something going wrong.
There were a bunch of branches piled together in a cone that had been lit on fire. The elves had been reading their systems so long at this point that the fire was roaring and easily driving the pre-dawn chill in the air away. One of the logs stacked up had almost burned through and was bent, leaning outwards where it had burned thin.
Just as the children went to run by it the thick branch snapped. Suddenly, a couple of branches began to topple toward the spot the children were about to step into. To Aiko, time seemed to freeze as she saw what was about to happen.