"As a soon to be member of the special forces you can get some equipment, we all get one of those tent's over there, besides that you can pick from a predetermined list. You are allotted to pick 1." He pulled out another parchment, "Zephyr, how much inventory do you spend, on all these damn parchment's? How many quills have you shoved in there?" His eye's got a little dark, "More than you know. But that's beside the point." He handed me the parchment, "just pick 1." I read the list as you would expect.
Low quality armor: receive some D tier leather armor.
"Ah, I have found my answer" Zephyr raised an eyebrow, and no skin was creased, "What?" "Nothin."
Ring Of Restoration: you receive an F tier hp Restoration Ring.
Tool Bells: receive 2 f tier Tool Bells that can be used to unlock lock's and detect traps.
Melee weapon: receive a D tier melee weapon of your choice.
Ranged weapon: receive a D tier ranged weapon of your choice.
Staff: receive an F tier staff of your element
Improved tent: receive an enchanted tent that has a multitude of bonus's.
"Zephyr, how do they expect me to pick one, they all look good, sure I'm sure my class will influence my choice greatly, but this kinda sucks." Zephyr shrugged, "we used to have much better options before our dark caster died 13 months after we formed. We aren't offered very good benefits because of that."
"How did that happen by the way?" His eyes darkened once more, "We got overzealous, he died because we thought we could take a medium sized battalion by ourselves, whilst the main forces we were working with retreated from an ambush. We couldn't. our superiors lost faith in us after that failure, hence the whole benefit reduction." "I see."
"Anyway, once you awaken, you can have that back, right now I'm gonna show you where you will be staying while we wait. You will receive one of tent's we have over here." Once more he procured another item from his inventory and placed it on the ground. "quick question, why do you sleep in a tent here anyway, if you've been here for what I assume isn't actually a year, 11 months if I'm correct. Why not build some cabins for you." "It's conditioning." I nodded, "Figures."
"I've got some stuff to do, feel free to set up whilst I'm gone, also, most teams would make soups since they are the most efficient way to cook just about everything, we don't really need to though. Vex needs far more calories than we do, so they just kinda doubled our rations, we didn't need that much. So we have wiggle room for what we actually want to make." That is nice to know. Looks like this man won't be living off soup.
Zephyr quickly made his exit, that left me surrounded by a bunch of strangers pretty much. So I just started setting up my tent, this one actually came with instructions. How convenient. Since I had a manual to follow it only took about 20 minutes, it also gave me the freedom to drop the sack that held the few things I brought with me. Now that I was done though I wasn't sure what I should really do though, all the other members were just lounging around. Vex hadn't returned to his tent and chose rather to sit in the sun away from the rest.
Everyone else had gathered in the center where what was probably last night's fire, they just sat and talked with one another. I guess I was gonna join them. Several log seats sat around the fire, I couldn't hear the conversation from how far I was though. As I got close enough I could hear it. "That's the thing though. It served no purpose." Kara turned, then they all did, "Are you gonna take a seat or stand there?" I decided I'd follow that piece of advice. Kara spoke once more, "Do you got any stories." "What?"
"We haven't done anything in so long, we've told all ours a long time ago, your only 19 if I remember correctly, but surely you've got something" I nodded "I do actually." She smiled, "Perfect."
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Zephyr returned, by now it was sun set, they spent the whole time listening to my hunting stories. When Zephyr returned they were engrossed by a story of an encounter I had with a rune bear. There is a massive difference between a dungeons monster and normal one's, dungeon monsters have an insatiable blood lust to kill any sentient life, non dungeon monsters are pretty much just souped up animals, an example are Frost Doe, female Deer that can use frost magic, but they act just like Deer. A Frost Buck can be aggressive during Rut times. Here they should be avoided, a Buck who wanted you dead was quite unlikely to be a threat even if they actually got at you. Take an angry buck and let it make half meter long ice spikes that move at 15 meters a second, now you have a threat.
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Everyone turned to Zephyr, Vex had joined us at the prospect of having something new to talk about, he kept most comments to himself.
"How are we doing Kairos." Kara spoke up. "You gotta hear this shit, I'm learnin a lot of stuff I didn't know. Maybe some things that could actually be useful knowledge." "Glad to see you two are getting along." Zephyr took a seat. "When you wake up tomorrow we can see what you are, before that though I'm gonna tell you what each stat actually does, actually, do you know what they do already?"
"Kinda, everyone knows that hp is used to heal, mana is used to cast spells, and stamina is used for warrior skills, I know the stat names, not sure what they do exactly though." Zephyr took a seat, "It's pretty simple, everyone has Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Endurance, Intelligence, and Focus. Strength makes you deal 5% more melee damage, Dexterity makes you move 2.5% faster, Vitality gives you 10 more hp, Endurance gives you 20 more max stamina, Intelligence gives you +15 mana, and focus makes you cast spells 2.5% faster and deal 5% more spell damage.
Some classes have unique stat's, an example is every single ranged class has Precision, increasing ranged damage by 5%. Next up are aux points, B tier classes have 1 Aux point that and A tiers have 2. Whenever you gain a level this stat goes up by 1, for example a B tier warrior has an aux in strength. it's to not that everyone has the base 6, even a ranger has Intelligence. This is because you can also use it to activate enchanted items, and Focus affects enchanted items as well, all Awakened will be wounded at some point so they all need hp, every class will find movement speed useful, and some enchants require stamina and not mana.
They all have some use for everyone." Zephyr paused and lightly exhaled, "Since we started this I'm just gonna tell you everything else as well, you will have 12 inventory slots by base, certain items stack, food stored in a slot can only amount to 2'000 calories, it doesn't need to be of one type of food either. Every level you gain 1 more. Every 10 levels you can learn a class specific skill, skills can be acquired normally as well and that's how you will get them most of the time, even class specific skills can be learned early than intended. It also means you won't have to spend a point on it. That pretty much covers it."
Zephyr stood back up, by now the sun had fully set, "I'm gonna go get some wood to start the fire." Zephyr left and we all sat in a comfortable silence for around 30 seconds before he returned. We all stepped away from the fire, he reached down with a fire stone and placed it down a bundle of kindling. Why do that though? We have a Fire Mage why not just have her do it? I decided to voice my opinion. "Why not just have Kala light the fire?"
"That's a very good question, there's a few problems with starting a fire with Mana Fire, it uses mana as fuel but even if it has actual fuel it starts using both but still costs mana, Kala could handle it for only a little bit before running out of mana. And once it was extinguished it wouldn't leave behind normal fire either" The kindling had caught fire and he placed the lit kindling inside a Teepee of sticks removing the stone,
"There's lot's of weird stuff in the system, the best example would be healing spells, an Un Awakened mage can heal Un Awakened and Awakened, an Awakened Mage can only heal his fellow Awakened, this is because the system healing spells actually turn mana into hp then give it to who you casted it on, Un Awakened don't have hp so it doesn't work. This means people like Kala have still learned actual healing spells and the system one's. There was a common misconception back when Awakened first appeared as to why the System didn't just use the life to heal Un Awakened wounds.
This is because hp is actually just a different form of mana. every weapon has a damage stat and if you land a strike you can heal the wound for that damage in about 5 seconds. It's pretty much stored personnel heal spells, when you heal an Awakened the system turn that hp into the Awakened's own and this makes there natural life force accept it. Un Awakened don't have this buffer so there body rejects it."
At this point the fire was roaring and it was much darker than it was a few minutes ago. Zephyr handed everyone some dried meat and a water skin and set up a metal spit roast where several pieces of salt pork had been stuck on. We talked for a while and eventually the salt pork had fully cooked and we all ate around the fire. Except for Vex, according to Kala he didn't like eating in front of people.
Once we were done we all made our way back to our tents. When sleeping in a tent it was important to make a hole in the ground shaped like a you, leave a nice chunk where your neck was and another for your head, this would ensure you had a comfortable sleep and awoke with no neck pains. I inspected the day, I liked all the people I would work with, Kala was energetic yet laid back, Fink was Serious yet laid back at the same time yet caring, Quentin was the only one who seemed actually serious most of the time. As for Vex, he was strange, he didn't talk much and mostly kept to himself, when I did talk to him they were short sentences. Apparently, or at least according to Kala, he suffered from a fair bit of social anxiety, but he would warm up eventually. With these thought's swirling in my head I didn't even notice when I fell asleep.