[Congratulations! Through extraneous and constant efforts your trait Insanity has developed and incorporated the budding traits Intermediary psychical fortitude and Intermediary emotional fortitude.
The trait Insanity has morphed into the trait Madness of the intermediary human.
Madness of the intermediary human: Grants a varying (between 0.75 to 2) modifier to mental resistance depending on the nature of the check. Grants a varying (between -50 to +200) psychical resistance bonus depending on the nature of the check. Grants a varying (between -50 to +200) aural resistance bonus depending on the nature of the check
Your trait, Faery narrative, has grown due to the realization of your significance and essence. +10 WIS, +10 CHA.
Through the absorption of a natural treasure and the practice of a personal energy absorption method, you have gained +6 VIT and +1 INT.
Congratulations! Through unrelenting efforts and opportune encounters you reached Rank 1.
Congratulations! By raising your rank higher than your life level, you have gained a chance at a corrective evolution. Evolve to reap the benefits of your work.]
It took several hours for Aki to come back to his senses, at the very least. He didn’t exactly have a clock and he was hungrier than ever, meaning it was time to bother the people at the hotel’s kitchen and get some bread. The sun was lower in the east than it had been before he started, so it probably wasn’t the same day, but that was fine.
He had, luckily, failed at his task. That meant he didn’t have to deal with the consequences of succeeding while also being able to take in the benefits of actually entering a state of mind necessary to even begin such an undertaking. The point in intelligence was unexpected, but welcome, though he’d have preferred to have the system straight out tell him about any downsides to what he was doing instead.
Instead of such convenience however, it seemed like he’d won another shot at the genetic lottery or some such. With some luck it’d be a correction aimed at his power rather than some punitive fuckery with a pleasant wordplay. Either way, the evolution he’d need to go through to figure out was not currently available, so he could only speculate, and even then, it was unlikely that he’d even get the choice whether to use said power up or not.
“Guess I should try to increase my stats till the next rank to try and get the most of this shit.” He muttered while stretching as he rose from his position on the floor of his bedroom. He really needed to eat something. For now he just circled his mana through his body.
Probably due to the amount of time it took to attempt his failure, he was nearly full of it despite how much he poured into said attempt.
He was so hungry in fact, that he honestly couldn't tell whether his newly evolved trait was fucking with him or he was just that desperate that he thought so seriously about straight out eating the serving maid instead of being led towards some snacks he could take while waiting for a quick meal. When a considerable part of their clientele was composed of gluttony demon-kin, that made a business rather well prepared for sudden and specific food orders up to a certain extent, but even the minutes he’d have to wait seemed too long for his maddening hunger to wait.
And that was what made him become completely awake. With focus behind it, he easily squashed the urges that told him to mindlessly gorge himself, but the fear of that sensation had not disappeared from his mind. Quickly summoning his new mental trait’s description, he looked at the new flat modifiers.
A quick glance had not been enough for him to realize earlier, but this was not just a double edged sword, this was a straight up cursed artifact! Not only did he have less than fifty wisdom to counterbalance the negative increments, but couldn’t his multiplicative modifiers also increase his own disadvantage?! That ‘variable’ part was truly monstrous if it was referring to reducing his defenses while he stood unalerted, especially if it also referred to his impulse control.
This was fucked up. Changing his emotional state was not supposed to be that simple either.
No matter what, he now needed to increase his natural resistance and learn to deal with negative statistics. It was hard to tell whether intelligence or wisdom would help more, but he was pretty sure there wasn't a Skill to help him if he still hadn't been able to obtain anything for pain.
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Rather, if he did get some mental equivalent then it might very well get taken over by his toxic trait. That meant he needed to both increase his basic mental faculties while also developing a technique to supplement it, be it recognised by the system or not.
Which meant meditating. Which meant more alone time with his thoughts and less magic.
"That evolution better get me some damn good stats." He muttered as more anger seeped into his chewing his perfect bacon-eggs-mashed potatoes analog.
While utilizing a kata or some repetitive but fulfilling task was a good alternative, that did not mean he was going to have a good time starting them, especially given his new condition.
For the moment, human interaction should remain at a minimum to conserve mental acuity, not that he wasn't already doing that before, and his training with elemental essence would be changed for training with conceptual essence so as to better integrate said essence into his whole.
'Where can I begin? Chaos would have me killing myself, there is no Machinery around, direct Destruction and Creation would have me crippled by the requirements, I don't actually know much about any weapon, Holiness would be considered traitorous due to the humans of the wes… I'm a fucktard, I'll just start with Mind and Vil mana.'
Sighing, he quickly conceptualized his first few spells with the specific mana tipes, which were surprisingly simple to produce for whatever reason, and proceeded to try and fail his first designs.
While designing Sin essence spells were actually harder than pure Vil essence, he did eventually get there after his fourth lunch. It was probably only effective due to the concentration of people in the surroundings and the fact that most of them were demon-kin more liable to produce the relevant mana, leaving an impression on the manasphere.
As he wondered how much Vil essence he would be able to take from an earthen city like Los Angeles, what with it having the narrative of being the city of sin and being home to some rather tematic and blatant crime, some rather unpleasant company came to his presence.
"Gorging yourself I see." Hissed knife slenderman in fataram. "Disgusting."
"Your narrative disgusting." He rebuted, the shadow spirit hissing and flaring the shadows around him like an animal trying to seem bigger, something he seemed to realize as his display was only gazed upon with pity, making him condense the shadows again.
"Watch your tongue or I will have it. So long as you can cast I won't be breaking contract, and unlike the fools of this realm you suffer not the weakness of stupid children." This time the mouthless shade was taken more seriously, and he knew it. "Listen well youngling, for I only have so much patience to play messenger and will not repeat myself. Her Highness calls for a truce, and since you have done so well for yourself with your last reward, don't expect help shoring up your weaknesses so soon."
Aki nodded. He wasn't delusional enough to think any sort of politician would apologize with only this much cornering from his part, so just the pretense of losing possible benefits was a good enough compromise from his point of view.
Especially since he now knew for a fact now that the demon kin had items capable of increasing his statistics and had also established a line in the sand while remaining within the employ of the kingdom. After all, they didn't need to like him to use him or even need him, and even if he now could not extract any more benefits from his recent achievements, that did not mean it'd disappear from his curriculum.
So long as he showed himself as capable of capitulating and respecting authority that is. Otherwise he'd be immediately recognised as a very risky threat and hunted down proportionally to his capabilities, which would be a rather inefficient use of his time considering his current contract, intentions and lack of need for XP.
"Won't be mentioned again. When we leave?"
"Tonight. You won't have time for any more detours either, as it has been decided we need to reach a big enough city a couple of days away as fast as possible. The nobles have decided to test you, so your lessons on fataram will move towards a more focused dialect, and you are expected to not cause a scene when attending any gathering where your presence is required."
"Mind magic in events?" He quickly questioned before his contact got away.
"So long as it is not overt, then it is ignored. I will be going now." Said the shade before dissipating.
While he remained sitting there, Aki sighed. He would have to include some beauty essence training into his time table apparently. He did have material to draw inspiration from, what with all the shoujo, shoujo aí, villainess reincarnation, mob in a dating sim reincarnation… the manga that he'd read, in general, could very well serve as reference for a character to help fake his way into polite society, but anything that he came up with would be rather irritating to play to say the least.
He'd need to eat it up though, as he wasn't prepared for those kinds of social gatherings and essence mana didn't stick around with coaxing, it needed something to latch onto.
Going the opposite route would be much better for his mental health as it'd allow him to intimidate his way out of this sort of obligation, but his new job didn't come with that sort of luxury.
'It's himbo time.'