CHAPTER 76 ADAPT
//AN: Really hate myself right now, so I said that I fixed all of my stat numbers only to find out today while I was making adjustments that my supposed ‘fixes’ were the ones that were wrong. I was applying passive bonuses incorrectly which is what caused the initial confusion… I really just need to create an excel sheet so I don’t have to worry about this anymore.//
//AN: So those were the patreon author notes. What's funny is that those numbers that I fixed were wrong as well. These ones are the right numbers. lol. Enjoy!//
‘Ping’ [Battlemage - Lightning] Has leveled 5 > 7
‘Ping’ [Bladedancer - Lightning] Has leveled 4 > 5
‘Ping’ [Nature’s Adept] Has leveled 3 > 4
‘Ping’ Class skill [Ride the Lightning] has been acquired.
No longer is lightning something separate from you, instead it becomes something you embody. Any electricity or lightning based attack you create you can ‘ride’ to its destination. Positioning or speed, the choice is up to you!
‘Ping’ [Mana Sense] Has leveled 25 > 12
‘Ping’ [Electric Sense] Has leveled 25 > 12
‘Ping’ [Sword Apprentice] Has leveled 19 > 22
‘Ping’ [Wood Manipulation] Has leveled 7 > 9
‘Ping’ [Accelerated Thoughts] Has leveled 22 > 23
‘Ping’ [Fatigue Resistance] Has leveled 7 > 8
‘Ping’ [Parallel Minds] Has leveled 10 > 11
Name: Alexander King
Ability Points: 525
Tier 2 Class - [Battlemage - Lightning] - Level 7
Ability - [Lightning Storm]
Ability - [Paralyzing Blast]
Ability - [As Fast As Lighting - Passive]
Ability - [Lightning Aura]
Ability - [Chain Lightning]
Ability -
Tier 2 Class - [Bladedancer - Lightning] - Level 5
Ability - [Forged by the Storm - Passive]
Ability - [Lightning Strikes]
Ability - [Enchanted Redirection]
Ability - [Enchanted Accuracy]
Ability - [Second Strike]
Ability - [Ride the Lightning]
Tier 2 Class - [Nature’s Adept] - Level 4
Ability - [Natures Protection]
Ability - [Healing Blossom]
Ability - [Elements of Nature - Passive]
Ability - [Natural Selection]
Ability - [Nature’s Touch]
Ability - [Barrier]
Ability - [One With Nature]
Enhancements -
Tier 1 [Point Blank] (Level 25)
Tier 1 [Weapon Proficiency] (Level 25)
Tier 1 [Quickness] (Level 25)
Tier 2 - [Close Quarters Casting] (Level 50)
Tier 2 - [Dodge] (Level 50)
Tier 2 - [Feint Proficiency] (Level 50)
General Skills -
Tier 1 [Identify] - Level 10
Tier 1 [Rest] - Level 1
Tier 2 [Mana Sense] - Level 1
Tier 2 [Electric Sense] - Level 1
Tier 1 [Sword Apprentice] - Level 19
Tier 1 [Wood Manipulation] - Level 9
Tier 1 [Accelerated Thoughts] - Level 23
[Fist Technique] - Level 3
[Mining] - Level 3
[Fruit Production] - Level 2
Tier 1 [Fatigue Resistance] - Level 8
Tier 1 [Erotic Arts] - Level 2
[Parallel Minds] - Level 11
Status -
Vig - [1787] (2501.8)
End - [1568] (2195.2)
Str - [1619]
Dex - [1720] (2478.94) [3718.41] {3718.41}
Agi - [1566] (2951.34) |3403.09| {4427.01/4878.76}
Int - [1807]
Wis - [1916]
Health - 25018/25018
Stamina - 21952/21952
Mana - 19160/19160
(number represents passives provided by classes) |number represents CQC enhancement bonus| {Number represents 1 second spike when dodging/with CQC active} [number for weapon dexterity]
Huh. Finally got the final skill slot filled out in my bladedancer class. And it’s an actual movement skill as well. It’s… Not great now that I’m reading it.
I have to use a skill first to have something to actually move along, and then I have to spend more mana to even activate the ability. It’d be better if it was just a passive or something that I could do freely. But I’d take what I could get at least.
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It certainly allowed me to move a lot faster than I could on my own. So I guess it was better than nothing. Well, I’d have to see how useful it was going forward.
I also got my first set of general skills to tier two. I was interested in seeing what they had to offer.
I spared one last look at Adam’s body. I wasn’t sure why I felt so sad about having to kill him. He definitely would’ve killed me. Was it because he was respectful once he found out the circumstances? Was it because he thought I was weaker than him? If he was going to be that respectful in the end, why was he so rude to me at the start? Was it because I was an elf? A slave? Because I had a face that looked like I was angry all the time? I wasn’t sure.
I turned to leave the cage, the soldiers opened it for me as I got close. Lurks was waiting for me just before the tunnel leading away from the arena, towards the waiting rooms. I was now noticing that there were several ways into the arena. There was a huge main entrance carved out of the rock wall. I assumed that it led back towards the main cavern, but I wasn’t entirely sure. Given that I hadn’t gone through it myself and all that.
As I stepped out of the cage, I made my way over to Lurks slowly. She waited patiently as I almost sheepishly made my way over to her. When I got close enough she held out her hand.
I reluctantly handed my sword over to her. She just smirked as she grabbed it. Thankfully, she didn’t touch me in any way. I let out a sigh of relief as she walked away. A couple of the soldiers walked up to me, grabbing my attention.
“Come on, we’re taking you back.”
I nodded without responding and followed behind them while disabling my armor and speed passive that caused me to spark. I wonder how long it had been that I’d been waiting and fighting in total. It was hard to tell while being stuck underground the entire time. At the very least I got a rough estimate of timeframes by knowing when our group went out to work every night.
I figured I might as well try and find out.
“What time is it?” I asked the two soldiers leading me.
They didn’t respond and just kept marching. I frowned slightly, a little annoyed at the lack of response. But there wasn’t much I was going to be able to do about that. It didn’t take long for us to make it back to the cellblock, where they tried to ‘throw’ me in again. This time I was ready for it though and slipped past them and made it into the door while giving them a snide look.
They fixed me with equally annoyed glares before closing the door behind me and locking it. I made my way down the tunnel to the main cavern. Entering it the area was deadly quiet and empty. It felt strange to be in here without any people mingling or making noise.
I heard a clang come from the cooking area as I was making my way back to my room. So I changed direction and went over there instead and found Jolene in the back. She looked up as I approached picking a pot up after she finished cleaning it.
“Ah, back already? Quick one today wasn’t it.”
I shrugged, “Not sure. I guess they had me go earlier than they did last time. The fight itself was much longer than my first one.”
“Rather impressive you’re able to fight them at all, You generally aren’t supposed to be able to fight people a tier above you at all, at least not until you start getting to the higher tiers. And even then it’s a bit of a struggle.”
I just smiled, “I’ve got my tricks and secrets.”
“I’m sure.” She said dryly.
I just pulled up a chair and sat down at the counter eliciting a raised eyebrow from Jolene, but she didn’t end up saying anything about it.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do right now. Maybe I should be working on training my sword skills, level that up and start getting it through the second tier.
I just wasn’t particularly in the mood after my fight. Maybe I’d start working on it later, right now I needed a moment to myself. I wasn’t feeling all that tired either, a benefit of [Fatigue Resistance] maybe?
“Well if you’re just going to sit there, you might as well make yourself useful.” Jolene’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts.
“How so?” I asked
“You can make some more of those fruits you made last time.”
“Hmmm. Yeah I guess I could.” I said idly thinking about the rest of the pot pie in my room.
I wasn’t tired, but I was feeling kind of hungry. And I had a good idea for how to get it without getting up. I used one of my [Parallel Minds] to focus on creating some flowers where I could see them initially right by my feet while my main mind started focusing on making some fruits on the counter in front of me.
Jolene got out the baskets for me to use to start putting different fruits in them. This time I made more than just apples, banana’s, and oranges though. I made apricots, mangoes, avocado’s, cherries, grapes, kiwi’s, olives, pears, and peppers. Did you know peppers were a fruit? I guess it made sense.
Fruits were really just vegetables with seeds right? Or so I thought with my half-baked knowledge from Earth. I wasn’t entirely sure and it didn’t particularly matter at this point anymore.
I made a bunch of other fruits as well, the list went on and on. It became easier and easier to make them as the skill leveled as well.
‘Ping’ [Fruit Production] Has leveled 2 > 5
During the whole endeavor of making fruits, my other mind was making groups of flowers all the way through the hallway spreading my awareness slowly to my room. It didn’t take too long to actually make it all the way there. Combined with the flowers I already had in my room that I could see, I was able to start using my [Wood Manipulation] skill to uncover the pot pie.
From there I was able to start guiding it down the tunnel, making sure it stayed balanced on top of a small circular disc roughly the size of a dinner plate. It had a small lip like a plate as well to make sure that the pie didn’t slide around.
I moved it slowly, part because I wasn’t in a hurry to get it out here, part because taking it slowly was probably better for the skill overall, and the last bit simply because I didn’t want to drop it by being hasty. I had a good grasp of the skill and it wasn’t like I wasn’t devoting enough attention to managing the skill now that I had multiple minds to work with. But haste makes waste and all that jazz.
It didn’t take much longer for the pie to make its way around the final bend and come into the main cavern and make its way over to my spot at the counter. I stopped making my fruits and turned to watch as I raised it up onto the counter and set it down gently.
‘Ping’ [Wood Manipulation] Has leveled 9 > 10
Jolene gave me an exasperated look, “Would it really have been so hard to go pick it up and walk it back out here?”
“It’s not about how easy it would’ve been. I need to work on my skills, I was given a slight awakening that I’m letting them fall behind today in my fight. Most of them are still in the first tier, so I really need to fix that going forward.”
Jolene just shook her head. “I guess so.”
I dug into the pie. It had cooled off to room temperature while I had been gone, but it was still good.
While I ate I made sure to keep up production of the various fruits. I’m not entirely sure what I planned to do with this skill in the end, but I figured I could level it while I wasn’t doing anything.
Speaking of not doing anything, I spun up one of my other minds to handle remaking my arm. My arm dismissed and slowly started being remade while I ate.
I smiled.
This was going to be great for leveling my skills. I had known this was going to be a great skill, but even when I had acquired it I didn’t immediately start putting it to use at its full potential. Which to be fair, I wasn’t exactly in the best state of mind when I had gotten it.
Arguably I still wasn’t.
But I tried not to think about that.
I was currently training [Wood Manipulation], [Fruit Production], and to an extent both [Accelerated Thoughts] and [Parallel Minds]. The last two I could feel were barely getting any experience either. I needed a better way to level them, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it.
The best way would probably to stress them with information overload, but how was I supposed to go about doing that? I was previously able to do that by utilizing [One With Nature] to try and observe more than my mind was capable of handling at once. But now that I was underground and out of reach of a lot of nature I wasn’t able to do that to the same extent.
I could try to spend more time in our commons area and listen to a bunch of conversations, but I wasn’t really interested in being around a bunch of people all day. It wasn’t something I really enjoyed. There was a reason I had stayed in my room all day on Earth.
I felt comfortable there. That hadn’t changed when I turned into an elf.
Hmmmm… How did I want to go about handling this?
I guess my intense thinking showed on my face since Jolene interrupted me, “What’s got your pants in a twist?”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah.” I’d kind of forgotten she was here, she was a lot quieter than when she was herding a bunch of people in the kitchens. I spun up another mind just to focus on her incase she said something going forward.
“I’m struggling to come up with an idea to train two of my general skills. How I did so before was by using an information gathering skill to overload my brain processes. But the skill I used requires there to be nature, essentially stuff in the forms of plants, trees, and flowers. Or something similar I guess. But none of that is down here so I can’t really use that.”
Jolene turned to look at me with an exasperated face, “Are you kidding me right now?”
I frowned as I focused on her properly, “No? What do you mean?”
“You can just make nature dumbass! So make some and use it to train with.”
Oh.
Yeah I guess I am kinda stupid, huh?
I immediately used the rest of my minds to start creating flowers anywhere my senses could see. It didn’t take very long to fill up the commons area enough to be useful. While I started spreading down the various tunnels with cellrooms for the other slaves to stay in I had another thought.
This would also allow me to essentially spy on everyone in the block. Definitely not a bad idea, if I could figure out how to get them outside of the room I could spy on the soldiers outside as well. Which would be pretty useful. Maybe.
My wooden arm finished up and was apparently just enough to tick it over to the next level.
‘Ping’ [Wood Manipulation] Has leveled 10 > 11
I immediately had it start back over from the start. It didn’t take much effort other than a significant amount of mana that I could gain back by letting one of my minds rest… That I wasn’t doing already.
I mentally slapped myself as I made sure one of my minds was considered to be ‘resting’, focusing purely on getting back my mana. Which surprisingly worked. The second I tried to move too much though the skill shut off until I remained stationary enough.
This would have been good to know in my last fight, this meant when I was standing still I could start recovering mana without fully taking my attention off of them.
While I was working on filling out the last bit of tunnel with the same lily flowers I was starting to become partial to, I got a new skill.
‘Ping’ General skill [Plant Production] has been acquired.
Huh. Maybe I could find a use for this later, but it would definitely be nice for creating more flowers more easily. Right now it sucked a bit of mana so I was having to go slow in the process. Maybe I could make them look more pretty later on? Time would tell.
For now I was just happy that I was making progress in my skills.