The next morning we were woken by Steven stomping down the corridor and yelling “Get up Get up, empty your bowels, and then eat. Yesterday is going to be a fond memory after today. Hurry”.
We all rush to complete our ablutions. There was barely any time to do more than wash off my hands and wipe off my face.
As I entered the mess hall Steven called out from the center of the room. Sit with your team. We leave for the training grounds once I have eaten.
I grabbed some food and sat with Robert and Fanny. We ate as quickly as we could as I had no idea when we would see more food. Certainly yesterday we were not fed until we returned to the mess hall. Although there had been water bottles to keep us hydrated.
Even as I looked towards the counter to see if there was more food one of the other instructors called out again “Come we leave now! Follow your instructor.”
This time I was able to start to examine where we were heading. But it was confusing as within a couple of turns the alleyways and byways did not seem familiar at all.
Soon enough we reached the training arena. Nothing much had changed here except that rather than only water bottles there were tables with fruit and dried meats. Red 1 followed Steven into one of the red circles. The shielding covered the area with a wave of Steven’s hand. With no further adieu, Steven started lecturing us.
“Robert your Fire Dart is an active skill, which is not an uncommon type of skill for a caster to learn, while the other skill that you have gained is passive.
What I want you to do now is to think about the passive weapon skill that you learn and say Expand. That will open the information about the skill. At this point, there will be little more than the name, and sometimes the level of the skill. Next, you will need to attempt to link your mind to the skill and state Understand three times.
The first word attaches meaning to the skill. The second time you say the word you need to empower the concept with your strength. The last repetition will actualize the skill.
To attach meaning you need to create an image of what you want from the skill. Understand should have a clear image of the information that is currently displayed being peeled back exposing more details.
The use of any skill requires power. Passive skills reduce the amount of power that you are to regenerate, while active skills use that power with each use.
This skill is one of the most basic skills that you will learn and it forms the basis to allow you to grow, As it is one of the gifts of the system you should all find it easy to learn. It will inform you of the basic attributes of the skill. As you master the skill it will grant you more information. Once you have reached the level of mastery then it will be able to be invoked by just using the word without repetition.
Begin”
Each of us started the preparations of the word “Understand”.
It was good to have what I had already hypothesized confirmed but there were clear differences between my hypothesis and what Steven had stated he expected that the words need to be said aloud. I had already worked out that as long as I mentally projected it in my mind it worked just as well. I had been aware that the use of skill used power but was unaware that passives also used power. To say that passive skills reduce the rate that you regenerate power did not make sense to me. It was much more likely that they consumed a small amount all the time so the apparent rate of regeneration was lower. This view of how things worked certainly meant there different mechanics that could apply.
After two repeated cycles the expected blue boxes appeared
New Skill - Basic Understanding - 1/10
Basic War Hammer
1/10
Able to swing a war hammer with some chance of striking your target.
Passive - Drains a small amount of stamina.
Upgrade path
Common War Hammer
I knew exactly what I would be trying tonight before sleeping. The magic of “Status”!!!
I repeated the process creating the illusion to Steven that I had not yet mastered the skill. I decided that I would announce success once either I had understood all my skills, run out of mana, or one of the others announced success. I would be second.
Skill Improvement - Basic Understanding I - 2/10
Basic Understanding
2/10
Gain a basic understanding of a skill and its costs. Also indicates likely upgrade paths.
Active - Uses a small amount of power.
Upgrade path
Understanding II
Synergies
Identify
???
Since the understanding skill had improved I repeated the focus on the basic war hammer skill
Basic War Hammer
1/10
Able to swing a war hammer with some chance of striking your target.
Passive - Uses a small amount of stamina.
Upgrade path
Common War Hammer
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Synergies
Blunt Weapons
???
It made sense that a skill with blunt weapons would also enhance the use of a war hammer. Since I had no idea how much power I had available, I decided to focus on the skills that had the greatest level. I had only upgraded one skill and that was Pain Resistance
Common Pain Resistance
1/20
Passive - Uses a tiny amount of stamina ???.
Upgrade path
Uncommon Pain Resistance
??? - ???? ? ??? ?????? ?
Synergies
Resistance
???
Suddenly with the use of understand on the uncommon skill a wave of exhaustion flushed through my body. I was clearly running on fumes. I collapsed to my knees, then my hands hit the ground. It was all that I could do to avoid lying prostrate.
Steven said to me “what were the results”, It looked like my plan of being second had just gone up in smoke. I read out the results of the basic war hammer notification without including the synergy information. After all, this was supposed to be the lowest level of the skill.
Moments later Robert said
“Basic Fire Dart in the second level of ten It is a small dart of mana that causes small fire damage to an opponent. Effective over a short-range. Can cause combustible objects to ignite. It’s active and uses a small amount of mana.
I can upgrade to Common Fire Dart or Basic Fire Arrow.”
He asked Steven what is the difference between each of the upgrades.
Steven replied
“The upgrade to a common level means that it will do more damage for the same cost, while the Arrow option will increase the range of the skill. You will take the upgrade to Common Fire Dart”
That did seem odd to me. Casters would always be paper tanks the best option for such a person should be to maximize the range of options. If they were going to be in a party system. My guess was that Steven had some way of improving how Robert was going to be able to avoid or withstand damage.
As my energy slowly rebuild so that I could stand Fanny announced
Basic Mace at level 1. I can swing a mace and cause some damage. When I do it uses a small amount of stamina. The upgrade path is just a series of question marks?
What does that mean Steven?”
You have not achieved the required milestones to allow you to upgrade this skill. The only reason that this occurs with a basic weapon skill is that you are either too weak or you are just too clumsy. You will need to complete these milestones before you reach level ten of the skill or you will be blocked. This has a large impact on how quickly you can advance your other skills as well. A blocked skill slows the progression of all other skills, the more blocked skills that you have to slower you will progress.
To the point of rapidly becoming useless!”
I got the distinct feeling that he already viewed Fanny as useless. I felt that she was going to be an important ally if I could only remove the curse that forced her to obey commands. I had enhanced her weapon, but removing the curse since it had now been in effect for a day, felt a lot harder. At some point during the conversation, I realized that both my and Fanny’s weapons were no longer enchanted, and it felt that I was regenerating power faster than before. So this type of enchant weapon had both an active cost and a passive cost once they were active.
While I am very pleased that I am starting to understand that there is a science that drives the mystical effects that I am seeing, it is clearly complex, and I have only dipped my little toe into the ocean. I need to keep Dunning-Kruger in mind along with confirmation bias. If I fell into either of these mental traps I suspected my life might be very short. Those powers that witnessed our arrival were so powerful at the moment that it would take nothing for them to wipe us out.
For the rest of the morning, Steven had us switch between attacking the dummy and using the Understand skill whenever it felt as if we had enough power to activate it.
He made Robert focus only on using his dagger. No further threats were made at that point, and he did not seem upset when at the start we were doing less damage than with the first set of attacks. He instructed us to focus on what felt right. Now that I had gained the skill there was a sense of correctness at times. With each of these attacks, more damage was done even though the effort that I was expending was the same. After an hour or so.
Skill improvement - Basic War Hammer I - 2/10
He kept pushing us, yelling first encouragements then insults, towards the end of the sessions it had reached the point of outright bullying. I was utterly exhausted but the skill had improved two more times. Now it was only taking me what felt like 10 or 15 minutes to destroy the dummies. Fanny was not far behind but Robert had fallen behind
By the midday break I had reached I had also improved my ‘Understand’ skill. It was not revealing anything more about a skill but it was using a little less power to trigger. I had limited myself to just working on the skills that I already understood.
Skill improvement - Basic War Hammer I - 4/10
Skill improvement - Understanding I - 3/10
At this point I was starting to feel when there were alternative paths that the hammer could take even when I had already started a swing. I was not moving at full speed. While the skill promoted a sense of speed to achieve correctness, I was focused on form.
At the end of the session Steven asked “How much have you each improved, and did you get any additional skills” and pointed at each in turn.
I responded “It has reached level four.”
Robert “I have gained an improved attribute of speed, but only improved dagger to level three.”
Fanny seemed very pleased “I have also gained improved attributes two in strength and one in endurance. Basic Mace is now level four.”
Steven pointed to a small pile of bottles and what looked a lot like iron rations. “Eat and Drink, do it quickly, you must continue to train. There is a pressing need for you to be deployed onto the frontier. So that we can move more powerful forces to areas of greater conflict.”
We quickly ate and drank. Once we moved back to the dummies, Steven approached me and said “you need to reach level 5 in the skill so that you can learn an active skill that will multiply the amount of damage that you do.
I expect that you will have reached this milestone by the time we finish today.
Robert, you are moving too fast, slow down and learn how a successful cut feels. If you improve your speed again you will earn a beating.
Fanny, I guess someone as useless as a healer would have to gain strength even to wield a weapon correctly, so that is acceptable. But you will have to reach level 5 just like Fonial.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of exhaustion, no stamina, and weapon strikes that were less than optimum. The lack of power meant that I was seldom able to exercise the ‘Understand” skill.
Fortunately for Fanny and myself, we had by late in the day managed to reach level 5 in our respective combat skills. My clothing had become sweat-stained, but poor Fanny her hair was now dank and damp. It lay and stuck to her scalp flat without body or bounce. Short hair was certainly of benefit for both Robert and myself. For all three of us, our clothing stuck to our skin and was chafing and leaving us very uncomfortable.
I was panting and struggling to hold myself erect while Robert sighed and mumbled that he had at last reached level 5 in his daggers skill. With that Steven told us to “Come”
It was difficult to drag ourselves back to the barracks. But in the end, we made it back and started to eat. All of the members of the Red barracks looked worse for wear. One member of Red 3 was looking as if he had been beaten, it was more than the sheer level of strain that the rest of the people were showing. He sported heavy bruising around the body and had one of his eyes nearly closed due to the swelling. I feared for his ongoing health.
Once we finished the food that was presented we all quickly ended up back in our cots. Sleep came very quickly.