---Maddy---

Maddison had roughly a second to gaze upon the city before a blue box slid up detailing her exploits.

👁️ Achievement get: The arcane scout. (rare)

Description: Spy a settlement and confirm its existence from a position you should not have been able to observe it from. Perform this sneaky spying unaided by tools or tricks – use nothing but your arcane abilities to do so.

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Stat: Mental visualization +3

Stat: Mental feedback defense +3

Where was that when I actually spotted the city?

Too many small weird situations are hard to ignore.

“Oh hey! The city almost looks like its floating” Jess called as soon as she spotted the towers in the distance.

Maddy squinted slightly and confirmed that yes, the city appeared to be blue and white stone placed high above a lake.

“I think you’re right” Maddy responded while a part of her continued to try and figure out the mystery of the system.

It's almost…well first I thought the system didn’t like magic. My guess was because it gave us skills that were locked and we had to jailbreak them to be able to edit them…we almost voided our warranty on the skills themselves.

That was why as soon as we pulled the mana pool and concepts into ourselves, the system seemed snubbed. The system gives achievements for all sorts of things – not just fighting – and yet as soon as I’ve started using magic it feels like all my achievements are combat related. The system hasn’t cared for all my hours of feeling out and redesigning my skills…it doesn’t care for all the practice I’ve done. It just cares when I’ve killed monsters with those skills.

It doesn’t care but it 'has' given me achievements for results of using those skills?

So…that ‘snubbed’ idea might be true but I think…I think the real answer is something slightly different. If it was really just snubbed I think the system would only give achievements if I didn’t use my magic.

Tentative hypothesis but my new guess is the system can’t see my magic? It can only see the results of it? So the system cares for results and not the process…But that’s not true because there are achievements for doing the ‘process’ in different ways like using different weapons or making it harder to get to the goal.

Maddy continued to mull the idea over in her head as they approached the side of the city. She needed to figure this out If she wanted to continue to gain achievements consistently. Currently achievements were the only way she could gain stats after all and stats were important.

Near the shore of the city, a straining bridge mixed with a staircase met their eyes. It was a sloping path up to a wide open gate and looked like it was on the verge of collapse.

Looking at her companions for confirmation then stepping forward Maddy climbed the stairs carefully listening to phantom creaks and concerning cracks as she did so.

“Approach,” A voice called down to her once she was halfway up the stairs.

Aren’t guards supposed to say ‘halt’? Maddy thought as she squinted forward fingers clenching her scythe unconsciously.

The staircase was shaped like an arc – near the bottom each step was square, but by the top half each step was wide and slightly thicker. Large blue slabs rimmed with white banisters each wider than the last. On the very top step a woman sat holding what looked like a telescope in one hand.

The gatekeeper? A guide? Someone random who heckles anyone who comes to this city?

Jess stepped up beside Maddy, moving in front as they continued towards the woman.

It looked subconscious, but Maddy appreciated the thought. Her knight. Her protective wall.

The guard looked simultaneously incredibly interested and board out of her mind. It was a strange dichotomy to Maddy’s social senses. You’d think her base state would be a boredom that left as soon as she became curious in us?

Stopping right in front of the woman Maddy squinted slightly seeing a second gate right behind the first one.

It made a sort of airlock as the telescope woman stood up and beckoned them between the inner and outer entrances.

“Is this a kill box?” Jess whispered to Maddy causing the telescope woman to snort from where she waited.

“I think it's just immigration” Maddy responded, voice low. She hadn’t felt an ounce of maliciousness from the gatekeeper. There were a few occasions that had made her question her judgement of people – magic seemed to be able to fool her senses – but ultimately she still trusted herself.

Stepping up to telescope girl Maddy watched as she spun her device and looked into it causing the staircase behind them to shift and descend to the ground below. A second complex spin caused the outer gate to slowly close trapping them in the entranceway.

When the large doors clicked shut the woman set her device aside and began pulling stuff out of the wall.

“Now, before you enter the city I have to give you a scan and make you take the cities commandments. At any point, you can leave but refusing the security check will bar you from ever coming through again.” The woman spoke as she set stuff up.

First a wooden desk seemed to slide out of the blue stone beside her then a crystal contraption and a scroll of pure white complete with inkwell. Each device that was removed seemed to melt out of the stone – was it an illusion? Maddy teased a tendril of light mana into her mind watching as a section of wall shifted to looking like soupy sand…it was dense – incredibly dense in comparison to her own illusions – but did prove that the wall was at least partly an illusion. Maddy couldn’t see past it with how dense the sand was but could confirm it was there.

She also noticed several illusion boxes surrounding them.

The wall was made of giant blue “bricks” the size of her head and around five of them were “missing” looking like rectangular pools of sideways quicksand.

Maddy focused back on the guard.

“Please place your hand on this global status reader and infuse a portion of your mana.” The woman asked. She seemed to have lost some of her bordom a careful eye tracking Maddy from the moment she noticed the illusion bricks.

“Sure,” Maddy nodded reaching out first because both her companions were hesitating.

Name Maddison Graves. Karmic Scry Neutral KS Using SE Intent WF Rule abiding Affinities Life&Death | Light&Dark Path Way of the Mage, Initiate. Domain None Mind Wisdom Intelligence Clarity 46 43 14 Body Strength Agility Endurance 12.5 14 5 Soul Spirit Whisper Stability 23 22 22 Stat Total 219 Major Realm Silver Minor Realm Full Step

Outlier notes: Mental power specialized in visualization. Innate ability increases effectiveness of mental speed and decreases mental power. Physical Strength and speed concentrated in arms. Second affinity forcefully gained: Body Power and Body Defense the source hosts.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The gatekeeper relaxed slightly as Maddy's status came up.

Maddy read it over before it faded, her eyes drifting between the new or altered sections. Karmic Scyry. Is that my attachments to the local powers? Showing I'm unaffiliated with any of them? Or is it something about my base nature...I'd like to think I'm "Good" – I haven't done anything that would place me halfway between a theoretical good and evil.

Domain? What's that? It looks important...the next step of magehood after I finish my foundation? Major and minor realms...are those Rank and tier? Rank...I think I'm still in rank 1 so rank 1 tier 2.

Name Jessica Rhodes Karmic Scry Neutral KS Using SE Intent WF Protective Affinities Creation&Desctruction Path Way of the Warrior, Initiate. Domain Protection Mind Wisdom Intelligence Clarity 3 14 50 Body Strength Agility Endurance 35 19 151 Soul Spirit Whisper Stability 0 0 1 Stat Total 273 Major Realm Gold Minor Realm Standing Outlier notes: Altered innate ability with distributed body base. Minimum endurance threshold for 'partial slime' designation met.

Name Troy Watts Karmic Scry Neutral KS Using SE Intent WF Reactive Affinities Light&Dark | Creation&Destruction Path Way of the Warrior, Initiate. Domain None Mind Wisdom Intelligence Clarity 9 18 21 Body Strength Agility Endurance 62 78 25 Soul Spirit Whisper Stability 0 0 0 Stat Total 247 Major Realm Gold Minor Realm Standing Outlier notes: Body power stats concentrated in eyes and arms. High overall focus on all perceptive organs. Body speed stats concentrated in arm and body reaction time. Body defense concentrated in stability. Core placement [Redacted]. Second affinity forcefully gained: Body Defense and Mental Power the hosts.

How are both of them a higher level? What happened? Is it just the system not caring about my magic?

I really need to figure that out soon.

– Also, 25 endurance? Did that mean he used to have 50?

Jess spoke up despite the group still being in front of the gatewomen – Maddy had also noticed but would have waited till they were alone.

“Weren’t you going to pick body power? When did you switch to defense?” Jess asked peering across at his panel.

“Uh” Troy glanced at the gatekeeper then finished. “I figured, back when we were fighting that knight –monster knight. That monster knight–” Troy seemed to want the gatewomen to know it had been a monster. Smart, but the real smart thing would be waiting till they were out of earshot if it was important.

“–I finally figured that I trusted you enough to protect me. That I should focus on my strengths instead of picking up my weaknesses. I had also died recently and had gotten a lot more defensive stats – they were suddenly my second highest stat – and I realized I they weren't as useful when the monsters were getting that strong so fast and splitting like I was was causing me to fall behind, so I just went with it.” Troy finished in a massive spew of words.

Idot. What if he surprises her with knowing he revived? Also shouldn’t you halve the effectiveness of your lowest stats? Its kind of a waste to nuke one of your higher ones. I mean if

“Hey! So you didn’t trust me before?” Jess laughed then smacked his back.

“What’s the second part you needed?” Maddy asked the gatewomen, steering the border check back on track.

“Oh, Okay.” The bored woman shifted the brilliant white parchment over and began to read out a disclaimer.

“Please recite this oath after me and then sign anywhere on the sign in sheet. The three laws are as follows.

“I – say your name here – promise not to break the following laws

“One. Do not commit unjustified murder.

“Two. Do not cause foundational damage to this city.

“And finally, Three. Don’t look down.

“….and that’s it, when you are done, sign the page.” The woman finished.

Feeling slightly silly, but – considering the oath didn’t seem excessive – repeating the words as spoken. Maddy had an intrusive thought.

Add in the stuff that’s obviously not part of the oath. Say ‘and that’s it, when you are done sign’. Do it.

She ignored the intrusive thought and signed her name after promising not to look down.

Putting everything away in a few seconds, the gatewomen pulled out her telescope once more and spun open the second gate. “Good luck!”