“Kevin, you have been more useful, according to our admin chatroom, than all but eighty three of your eleven billion fellow humans. Thank you.”

“It’s been a tree--eet working with you, Mr. Shrub.”

“That joke is almost but not quite bad enough to skip my personal thanks. In this case, my thanks come in the form of advice. I’ve been neutral so far in allowing you to choose what you pursue. With no help, you’ve barely survived the last two trials. The upcoming trial is harder than the previous ones were. Indeed, it's harder by quite a bit. While the second trial was a bit harder than the first, the third trial is a lot harder than the second. If you don’t improve your combat readiness substantially in the next few days, you’re going to die in the next trial. Full stop. You have no real chance.

"If I were both bipedal and in your shoes, I would seriously consider improving my base humanity. Both your offense and your defense are lacking. Kevin, I've become rather fond of you this past 2.5 weeks, and I implore you: Please do something to survive. A week of escrima practice is not enough to get you through.

"Were I in charge of your improvement, I'd spend thuams towards both self-improvement and towards thuamaturgy."

I’m shocked to hear such direct, helpful advice from the plant. “Alec. Dude. I really appreciate that. Maybe you noticed, though, I didn’t listen so good about self-improvement. Can you go over that again?”

“Certainly, Kevin. Two topics. Attribute improvement and Thaumaturgy. Attribute improvement is one of the notable capabilities and limitations of this dimension. Let's talk about that first.

“You can become better at any attribute you like, by updating both your skill and morphology. For instance, you could get stronger, or tougher, or smarter. The early improvements are incredibly cheap. But later improvements are a lot more expensive. The first increase costs 1 R-Thaum. It's nearly free for you. The second, third, fourth and so on each cost ten times as much as the previous one. Each increase improves each of two capabilities by a cube-root of two factor: about twenty-five percent. The math works out so that two improvements or three improvements provide roughly a sixty percent or one hundred percent growth respectively."

“Wait, man,” I interrupt. “I've got three o-thaums. I could buy four power-ups."

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“Indeed. That's more than most. Do you want to?” Asks Alec.

“What’s the catch? Dude. Something like this, there's always a catch. Do I have to sell my soul? Cut off my dick? Give you my firstborn unless I can guess your name? Really, what's the catch?”

“The catch is that every time you increase your attributes, you increase your thaum consumption as well. People who have taken 3 upgrades have sometimes quadrupled their strength, but they've also quadrupled their thaum consumption. Instead of buring 1 Thuam per day, they've increased to 4 Thaums per day consumption. Instead of six hours of rest per eighteen hours awake, they need twenty four hours of rest per eighteen up.

"There are relatively few folks who've earned the o-thaums necessary for the fourth upgrade, but those who have require about 39 hours of rest per 18 hours of activity, a little worse than two hours asleep per hour awake. While that sounds like people would begin to hibernate like bears, the reality is different.

"People become hunters, fighters and warriors. You want a week of activity? Kill a monkey. The internal strength dimension forces those who wish to grow to become warriors, and to not only improve their strength but to test it.

"Your situation is different because of your thaumic drumming. Because you have a massive 125% improvement to your thaumic regeneration, three upgrades would have you "resting" only ten hours and forty minutes for every eighteen hours of activity. If you adjusted to a twenty four hour clock, that would be eight or nine hours of required trance-drumming in a day, rather than your current three. If you were to choose four upgrades, you'd need to split your time fifty-fifty between thaumic drumming and other activity."

“Alec, my green fern-d, are you sayin’ that if I massively improve myself, then I’ll be required to spend half my time drumming? I’m not sure I heard you right. Sounds like that’d be way rough on me. Hah. Jokin'. I’ll trust you that it’s a good idea. What do you think about buying all four enhancements, and choosing 5 speed increases, two perception increases, and an agility improvement.”

“That’s a surprisingly balanced choice, Kevin. It will definitely help in a fight. And while I would bet you were choosing it primarily for drumming purposes, it will substantially increase your combat effectiveness. Moving more than three times as fast, sensing things 60% better, and having even a bit better natural body control and balance should matter a lot to your combat skills. I should note that increasing strength and toughness are likely even stronger choices, and you might at least consider those."

“Dude. You know me by now. I’m a drummer, not a fighter. I’ll fight because I have to, but not because I like it. Drumming faster though? That I can love. And if I’m moving 3 times faster than the monkeys now, I don’t think they’ll be much of a threat. The sensing should maybe also help my echolocation. And a bit of extra coordination will probably make more of difference than going full Flash. Are you with me?”