[Congratulations, you have completed the quest: Siege at Seren fortress.
Completion rate: 99.5%
Grade: Extreme
Reward: +100.000 XP, +10.000 Seren fortress favorability, +3 random reward, +trait piece, +Significance.
Congratulations, through practice and accumulated significance, you have discovered a new trait.
Chosen enemy - humanoids: When fighting those of human descent, bonus relevant bane essence generation.
Chosen enemy - Elemental: When fighting those risen from pure essence, bonus relevant bane essence generation.
Your trait, Faery narrative, has grown due to the realization of your significance and essence. +20 LUCK.]
'Not really what I expected, but at least I don't have to put points into luck now. Also a rather good moment to pick up at least one of those random rewards, they just sit on my stat screen anyway.' He decided, as any random item that came out could now be explained as his experimentation so long as it wasn't too overpowered.
[Random reward selected. Calculating results… Calculating… Congratulations, you have gained the Skill Spell: colorful flatulence Lv 1.]
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He now needed to grind that. A spell about making shit colorful. Which he had no way of forgetting because the system imprinted it into his head…
Aki decided that from now on he'd accumulate his random rewards until they were plentiful enough that he could sacrifice them in a fate magic ritual in exchange for something. Anything really. In much the same way, he was never going to put points into luck unless he was fighting a fate caster.
It was with that kind of resignation that he burst into the princess room and opened one of her decorative bottles of alcohol. He knew it was decorative because it'd come with the suite, but damn was it bad. Just a couple of mouthfuls from the bottle and he wanted to vomit already.
It was on the fifth mouthful that he sat the half emptied fancy bottle down, face and throat absolutely burning, but otherwise all he could feel was a simmering anger he couldn't properly explain. Sitting down on the floor with his back against the wall, he started talking at the young woman in front of him that said something he couldn’t focus on.
”I wanna get laid, I want my phone back, I want to actually be able to read again!” He groaned, heat building up in his eyes in what he recognized as angry tears. Then he turned to the princess. “Almost everything hurts or makes me nauseous in this damned place, but what i couldn’t hate any more is the thought that not only will i get used to it, but also end up forgetting my home because of one or another stupid adventure.”
Admitting to it all outloud was supposed to be some kind of fucked up stile of therapy. It made him very fucking sad and raw though, so telling wether it was working was rather hard, and he could feel the tears demanding a lot of his time already, so there he laid, angry and hopeless while looking at the opposite wall, a speechless princess watching his minor breakdown.
He'd get over it, of course. The burning emotions would run themselves out and he'd be left with a new type of apathy. With any luck the artificial one would have neared it's end as well, but he honestly needed to just feel sad and do nothing at the moment.
……………….
'Aki' was probably laughing his ass off at their stupidity. Whatever realm the spirit came from clearly knew about summoned heroes, and despite his transformation being witnessed upon summoning, they had actually fallen for his ruse due to his strange magic.
Whether he had somehow influenced those that'd seen him with some insidious mind manipulation was still in question, but the inquisition's initial foray had turned out negative, and normal manipulation could not be easily discarded, so for now all those involved in the fiasco were merely under suspension.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Truth be told, even his own position was being threatened at the moment, but he wasn't the Archbishop of Patience for nothing. Taking him out would cost too much after his meticulous preparations, and his more political brethren had far weaker prey close to their clutches.
No, unknown monster aside, it was more important to figure out how the demon's had learned about their ambush.
Not only did their fast response ruin any impression they might have made on that spirit, whose powers he could still not understand, but it also made it impossible for reinforcements to arrive before the saint candidates were taken down. That shadow spirit had simply been too powerful, it’s presence known but underestimated.
They had lost too much in the confrontation, not only in personal, but in morale and trust, with both the masses and the soldiers receiving a seedling of fear. The Burning sun formation was rarely beaten back, yet this time it had been destroyed. The green saint candidate rarely came late due to his speed, yet despite being in the region he was nowhere to be seen until things were already too. The fact that they only had one closed coffin with anything inside of it to bury was certainly also not helping.
Some wanted to use this as a chance to entice the masses, starting with a campaign to recover the body of their saint or at least avenge him, as most anyone would realize that the enemy wouldn't bother with conserving the carcass, nevermind that demons didn't actually have similar burial traditions and had already either dismantled the man for mana infused materials or burned him off with the common soldiers.
He saw this as a warning. Their efforts were losing effect and they would need something special to regain momentum. Unknowingly however, the demon's had provided the answer to his plight in their attempt to destroy the border fortress.
"Your holiness. The research is proceeding as expected." The scholarly priest said, going to the heart of the matter after his greeting.
"Good. Proceed with the projected acceleration plan, don't mind minor discrepancies in budget, we shall deal with dissidents later." Time was of essence and there were heroes to be summoned.
……………….
On the two extra days they stayed in the city Aki cried a few more times, some small thing or other allowing him to release his pent up feelings with abandon. Something that helped regain his emotional force quite a bit, though he wasn't quite fully healed yet.
Sure, those moments were not as organic as the first, but that didn't mean he wasn't feeling like shit. Being in a city where you couldn't speak with anyone was horrible, especially when you depended on someone else, especially when you didn't trust that someone.
After some time though, they were now back on the road and had even picked out several quests from the adventurer's guild to complete while traveling. Apparently there were many monsters on the areas not settled by civilization, and so long as there hadn't been a recent effort to cull said monster population in the surroundings, it was guaranteed that they would try to migrate into the borders of whatever country they were near, sans there were both standing quests for goblin and warg extermination as well as specific termination quests for specifically savage beasts encroaching on living spaces of some villages.
Admittedly, it wasn't all one big line filled with side quests, but he’d been rather persuasive to get his desired detours.
Glass canon capabilities aside, he was absolutely useless in real combat and truly needed to train. Helping the population of the empire was already to be his task anyway, so it was better to do both at the same time, nevermind the need to start building his prestige as an adventure to facilitate his future career.
More importantly however, was his class advancement quest. After actually giving the long ass list of possible achievements in it a proper read, he had realized that there was a good chance of obtaining new traits directly. Perhaps even reach for some kind of talent able to give him a direct multiplier in his magical capabilities.
The increased affinity stuff was fine, and although he didn't feel much difference when obtaining them, he did understand how several increments of a 2,5% (averaging estimation) could be game changing when stacked, be it in an additive or multiplicative way, but some numbers he could actually see and use would be very appreciated.
In much the same way, he intended to attempt a few things to increase his life level, something that while he knew jack shit about, seemed to be rather important, and if he had to bet on anything being a multiplier, that'd be it.
His first plan was to make and then cap, an offensive spell, a defensive spell and an utility spell for each of the basic elements. Depending on how many points he could etch from that then the next step was obviously to start on doing the same with their combinations and offshoots.
The base amount of points for such would be a basic 1 per creation and 10 per mastery of said spell, but that amount could vary up to 100 for a 'basic skill', and more for other denominators, but for now he'd be focusing on the basics.
Aside from grinding points though, this would also help him go through his knowledge and revise and polish it's usage. For example, it wasn't like he always kept in mind how plasma worked, but training so much with it would invariably help him use it and also refine his image work for spell creation.
Really though, he'd probably be able to much more simply do what he currently envisioned with a greater host of stats, so he had to take advantage of the fact that doing it was still an achievement while he could, especially with a quest to so directly reward him.