Quill snapped awake and was yet again assaulted by system screens Which earned no small amount of grumbles from him.
Congratulations! you have earned the achievement “Ahead of the rest”
To be the first F-rank of your whole planet. Your parents would be proud but Phil from the planet over is already S-rank in the same amount of time. Why aren't you?
.2 for all stats
Error! Could not distribute stats to Soul redistributing evenly to body and mind.
You have one class skill point to spend. Choose skill?
You know given how his class was awarding him 10 free stat points he sort of felt like the stats awarded from earning achievements was pretty lackluster.
“Maybe achievements have a different purpose?”
“Oh yeah like what?”
“How would I know? Now stop your grumbling and choose your class skill. I'm anxious to see what you'll be getting with this new class.”
Before he even went about choosing his class skill he wanted to briefly go over his status page so he could see all the potential gains. Making sure he evenly distributing his free stat points between body and mind cuz what the hell was he going to do with soul
Quill ERROR
Lvl: 25
Race: Human (F rank)
Class: Rebellious anarchist
Body: 33.5
Mind: 32.2
Soul: ERROR
Buffs/ailments: Insanity (mild)
Skills: Dirty fighting (lvl 3), Dodge (lvl 5), pseudo energy manifestation (lvl 4), enhanced senses (lvl 2), Identify (lvl 3), survival instincts (lvl 3), Mental focus (lvl 4), split thinking (lvl 4), Stealth (lvl 4), Enhanced reflexes (lvl 2), Trap Maker (lvl 1)
Achievements: Tutorial Forerunner, First step towards greatness, professional lawyer, Apex, Sin killer, Sin suppression, Purged of sin, Ahead of the rest
traits: ERROR (unique), Powerful mind
That was probably how he was going to continue to distribute his free stat points. If something changed down the road maybe he would change his distribution but for now keeping things even seems like the best go around.
“Still waiting on the class skill. I swear, sometimes you purposefully delay things just to annoy me.”
“Guilty as charged.” He quipped while bringing up his class skill options.
He was once again given a large list of options to choose from. But something he did note was that these options seem to have a much different flavor to them as opposed to the ones for Savage Warrior.
While Savage Warrior skills heavily focused on physical combat or things that helped with fighting. Rebellious anarchist skills seemed to have a harder focus on stealth, subterfuge, or just causing as much chaos as possible. For example this skill.
Explosive Art (Uncommon)
The rebellious anarchist likes it when things go boom. A small boom? A big boom? It matters not so long as it goes boom. And if you pick this skill you can guarantee a better boom.
It would have been nice if his skills actually told him what they do instead of him just trying to rely on these weird descriptions. Right as he thought that his screen changed.
Explosive Art (Uncommon)
The rebellious anarchist likes it when things go boom. a small boom? a big boom? it matters not so long as it goes boom. But if you pick this skill you can guarantee a better boom.
Explosive art increases damage by explosions and allows the user to increase or decrease the size and focus on a particular direction if desired. Higher levels increase these effects.
“Are you fucking serious! Are you saying you could have given me descriptions of what skills could do and you just chose not to because I didn't fucking ask!”
“I mean, are you unhappy with your skills? Most of the ones you have seem pretty straightforward and I don't really see you changing your choices if you could go back and read their proper description?”
“It's the principle of the thing! This system is defective and a piece of junk! The whole damn thing needs to be thrown out!”
“Well on the bright side you now actually have descriptions of what the skills can do so you might as well look them over.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
He let out a growl but still looked things over. At least he wasn't guessing on what things did exactly. He didn't really know how long it took but he felt like he finally settled on one specific skill despite the temptations of a few others.
Surprise attack! (uncommon)
The rebellious anarchist fights the Power! Unfortunately the power is much more powerful than them. So their best course of option is guerrilla warfare and hitting them when they least expect it.
Surprise attack greatly increases damage when inflicting a blow towards someone or something who didn't see it coming. Has a small chance of inflicting the ailment status bleed and/or concuss on its own. Damage and ailment chance increase with skill level.
As opposed to the Savage Warrior class, he was a little more hard-pressed on what skill to take as many of them seemed useful. However he believed the skill “surprise attack!“ would be the most useful for him for his current situation as he didn't really think the roaches would pose too much of a threat so long as he kept to his hit and run tactics but the cursed sins were another story.
He used up all of his bombs to try and take down the first cursed sin and that wasn't even enough to kill the damn thing. So now he was going to have to figure out how to do heavy damage as quickly as possible. Preferably with an opening strike to heavily hinder and maybe even kill one of them, thus surprise attack seems like his best option.
After he selected his skill he left the break room and started doing some small stretches.
“What are you doing?” she inquired after a couple of minutes of this.
“Well I just put five stat points in body and the most I've ever put in was one stat point so I figured I should try getting used to the new added strength. The last thing I want to do is accidentally run head first into a wall because I underestimated my own speed.”
With that he started jogging around the Grand Stations welcoming hall; it was certainly big enough to allow him to. After four laps he began to pick up the pace and soon he was sprinting as fast as he could, having to jump off walls in order to do sharp turns due to his increased speed.
Despite sprinting for several laps he didn't even feel tiniest bit winded and he was pretty sure he was running faster than any human could ever or has ever done. Maybe it was tooting his own horn but he was pretty sure he was running faster than a horse.
He then moved to the stairs, since he didn't have any particular measurement for testing strength he would have to try and do the next best thing which was to see how many stairs he could jump up. While sure it wasn't the most accurate he couldn't really think of anything better.
He wasn't going to bother getting a head start and instead just jumped from the base of the stairs and soared upwards. Further than he had actually expected and managed to land a good 20 stairs up.
“22. Are you even bothering to count?”
“I was rounding.”
“Why would you round when you're trying to see how much strength you have in a jump which I am assuming you will be testing again once you level up.”
“It's more of a curiosity than me seeking any real accuracy. Plus this is largely just me trying to get used to a much stronger body. Surprisingly though it doesn't feel that much different despite the clear difference.”
While it was a little difficult to tell the difference between his body as it was before and now, it was next to impossible to figure out how much the mind influenced him. Hell, with the trait powerful mind he should have an even stronger mind but he still couldn't figure it out. You would think with powerful mind and a high mind stat he'd be smart enough to easily figure it out.
“Shouldn't have misclicked now should you?”
“I know, I know, I'm sorry.” He then looked up the stairs and felt like he needed to check on the dead cursed sin, assuming there was anything left. As he crested over the stairs and turned down the hall all that was left was a massive pile of dust.
“I feel a sneeze coming on just looking at that.” he muttered as he carefully walked around the giant pile towards the platform itself. he didn't really want to give him a self a sneezing or coughing fit plus the idea of breathing in that dead worms flesh particles was just plain gross.
He made his way to the platform and checked the electronic sign that said when a “train” was arriving. Instead of a time or saying something was arriving soon the sign merely said “delayed”. He took that as a good omen and desperately hoped that meant there was only one green cursed sin which would hopefully mean that the other five colored curse sins didn't have multiples.
“Fingers crossed right? Though perhaps you should double check the grand station's main lobby and see what their sign says just to be safe.”
“True this is a system designed dungeon after all. Wouldn't put it past it for it to also be glitchy.”
He left the platform and scooted past the large dust file to make his way to the grand hall and checked its own signs above the pay gate. Sure enough, one of them just said delayed while the rest had time on arrival. Of course that didn't mean there weren't more green cursed sins but for now he would operate as if there was only one until given evidence otherwise.
Now that he satiated his curiosity he moved on to his next test. He put his palm out and slowly summoned up a small wisp of his energy manifestation. Paying close attention to how easily and smoothly he could summon up the energy and have it move around him.
It felt like it had been a while since he had done this and there was a noticeable difference at least compared to what it was like before. Still a part of him wondered how much was from the boosted stats and how much of it was from his skill level. A thought occurred to him though and he summoned up the skills status page
Pseudo Energy Manifestation (epic. Lvl 4)
Very few would be bold to take the first step towards such a power except for the ignorant, the arrogant, or the truly talented. Which one are you?
This skill allows you to summon up energy from your very being. But it takes a heavy strain on both body, mind and soul while doing so. The more complex and active the construct the heavier the strain. Both the strain and the constructs created become easier with higher stats and higher skill level
So it was a combination of both, still would have been nice to know how much both affected the skill. But at least he could test things out now and then again when he leveled up to see if there was a strong difference.
“Hey, quick question?” He asked “I noticed that leveling up has become harder the higher I go which makes sense but now that I am a rank higher would it become even more difficult especially with killing a lower ranked enemy?”
“No idea but it kind of makes sense so I think it would be safe to assume so. You can easily test that out by going and killing a bunch of low-leveled creatures though. Why?”
“Well I'm going to go after the roaches next. I guess I was just wondering if I could gain more levels seeing as how every level I get would help me greatly in killing a cursed sin.”
Before she responded to that, the trapdoor suddenly let out a bang causing Quill to nearly jump out of his skin before quickly pivoting towards the door readying his energy manifestation.
The trap door Jiggled a little as something below clearly was trying to open it but thankfully the throne seemed heavy enough to keep it shut. He took a deep breath getting ready to put the throne back into his ring and fight whatever was below when the jiggling stopped.
He eyed the trapdoor wearily before the thing below that was trying to get in knocked on the door with three muffled taps.
Great, now he either had to entertain guests or fight off polite invaders. He didn’t know which would be worse.