Excerpt of “Personal observations of attributes and classes” by Grand Magus of Earth, Edward von Lichterberg:
It is best to describe the effect of attributes by the example of the farmer and the rabbit. The story goes like this:
A farmer’s Perception and Luck lets him spot a small figure in his field and hear crunching sounds. This information gets send to his brain, where his Intuition immediately lets him know, that this figure is a rabbit happily munching on his plants. The farmers Intelligence is low, so he does not even think about setting traps, building fences or getting the hunter of the village to shoot the rabbit with his bow. Instead, he takes his spade and charges at the rabbit intending to beat it to death. However, the rabbits Agility is higher than the farmer’s, so it manages to escape and is slowly gaining distance, while the farmers Endurance is letting him continue to angry chase after the rabbit. The little rodent finally arrives at his rabbit hole and darts inside. The still angry farmer uses his spade and starts to excavate the hole with his high Strength. The rabbit’s Intuition is letting it know, that the farmer is digging closer and that it probably should keep escaping, but the attribute is not high enough to tell it in which direction to do so. Plagued by an even lower Intelligence, than the farmer, it does not take one of the other dozen exits and runs back to the one, from which it came in. Jumping out of its hole, it is hit by the blunt side of the farmer’s spade. Its low Constitution does not let it withstand the blow and the rabbit dies.
After that example of two stupid creatures, the reader should be able to discern the reason, why mages will always be superior to warriors. Power used with Intelligence will always beat Power used without it. Warriors are able to sustain their strength in a fight longer than mages, but it is still Power used without Intelligence. In the long run the mage is going to simply outsmart the warrior.
The fantasies of the common peasants are nothing more than that: fantasies. The sword-wielding hero with an Intelligence of ten is never going to outsmart the evil Arch-Lich with an Intelligence of two hundred. The fairy-tales are about stupid men with swords killing smart men with magic. The real world is about smart men being killed by even smarter men. The stupid are nothing more than puppets to be manipulated by everyone who feels like it.
In the evening, I decided to go hunting on the next day. I desperate needed more Affinity, and I was not going to get it by sitting in the tower. Therefore, I choose to murder other living creatures for it instead.
Killing other beings was the fastest way to level up. Ordinarily you would gain exp from working in the profession of your chosen class, with Unclassed naturally being the exemption. Killing circumvented this. Regardless of your Class, once you killed something or somebody you would gain experience proportional to the level of your victim. Theoretically, someone could get hundreds of levels by simply slaughtering low-level flies. Practically, you would need trillions of the small critters.
I myself got a fair share of exp from the occasional hare I managed to capture in my slings. The problem was that I needed approximately between 70 and 90 hares to get the nine required levels. I estimated that with an Affinity of ten, I should somehow be able to manage performing a scaled-down version of the ritual. Still 70 to 90 hares was simply something I was unable to manage in a short time. It would take me at least a year and murdering the whole bunny-population in the area, to reach that count.
Instead, I de-oiled the hunting spear, I bought after the goblin incident and put together a pack with a small shovel, ropes, ointments, a book and other miscellaneous items, I thought I would need. I intended to take a quite long trip in the woods to find some bigger game, which would hopefully earn me more exp. Correspondingly I put together rations for multiple days.
Spoiler: Spoiler
Medieval "Backpack" [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/14/4f/32/144f32d1a62811f428b209d0f11207de.jpg]
The next morning I woke up early and after grabbing my spear and my backpack, stepped outside of the tower. I pulled the heavy door closed behind me and carried out the multiple gestures required to lock it. I went past the small vegetable garden, which was mostly barren in this time of the year, and arrived at the first barrier. Standing still and concentrating, I used the meager amount of mana in my body to connect to the barrier and forced it to open a small hole in front of me. Watching while pulling mana in my eyes, I slowly threaded through the hole, careful not to let a part of me touch the edges.
After about two meter, I walked out of the hole and found myself in front of the second barrier. Willing the hole to close behind me, I used the same process to connect and walk through it. Stepping out of the second barrier, I just stood there and took a deep breath. In front of me stood proud, old trees alongside a small trail, which a couple dozen meter away broke out of the thick woods in a green plain, the trees becoming slammer closer to the edge of the forest. Turning around I saw with my still mana-filled sight the red half domes of the barriers, under which my tower stood. The light got slightly distorted passing through the barrier obscuring my home behind it. My father told me the two barriers were made by his mentor, who resided in the tower before leaving it for my father. Like many other things, he never explained to me, why the barrier was tinged red and not the light blue colour mana normally had. He probably did not know himself.
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With a last look at my home, I headed off deeper into the woods. I knew the surrounding area quite well. Setting small traps, treading to my vegetable garden and helping the occasional peasant from the surrounding villages were my main source of food and income.
Orienteering myself with the position of the sun I headed east. The forest was quite big and stretched itself from the east to the southwest. You would need at least week of hiking over forest trails and stepper getting hills to get far in the southeast, where the forest made space for a mountain range. The end of the forest marked also the kingdoms border and the start of the territory of independent tribes, which called the mountains their home. A standing force of soldiers regularly patrolled the border, which made the forest relatively safe and to the livelihood of the couple dozen villages, which laid on its edge.
I kept being on the lookout for tracks, while treading through the forest. I did not bother with trying to be quiet, as I did not intend to stalk potential prey, but to find animal paths with fresh tracks of some big game. Hunting had pushed any large animal further in the forest, so the results after my first half a day were underwhelming. I saw a single stag from afar, was however unable to find a good spot to hide a sling. The only other highlight was an old track of a wolf, but with the track being weeks old he would be long gone out of the region.
The sun was already low, so I decided to make camp. I built an improvised shelter and got a small fire going. After having a hearty meal, I improvised a tripwire with some small rope and tied the end loosely over my hand, before wrapping myself in a sheet and lying down. Soothed by the faint crackling of the fire, I fell asleep fast.
The next day I awoke, when the first ray of sun broke through the leaves of the tress above. I wrapped up my stuff and set out. It was noon, when I found the first promising location. It was an animal trail leading to a little creak, with old and fresh tracks of deer and a whole herd of aurochs. Autumn had just ended and there were still dead leaves lying on the path, so a few more to hide my traps should not be noticed. I scouted the path in its entirety, before settling on a bottleneck between a big tree and some rocks, as the location for my traps.
Spoiler: Spoiler
Aurochs [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/53/11/78/531178ad463d95ca26ba757b88a7bcf6.jpg]
Since I was looking to kill for exp, I naturally set the bigger aurochs as my target. The only problem was: “I am not confident in directly killing any of them and if I only wound one, it is very likely, that I will not be able to finish the job. If its dies fast there would be no problem, since I would still get the full credit for the kill. But if it keeps surviving for a couple of days it very likely, that either another predator will come and take the easy prey or it will recover in the protection of the herd.”
I would of course get some of the exp for the assist, if a predator kills the already wounded auroch, but I needed more than that. Even if I managed to get the full exp, I would still need one or two more aurochs to get to the level I wanted. To take them on in an open fight was suicide. With a lot of running around and dodging, I was maybe able to fight a cow. With a bit of luck my fireball could also take out a bull, but that would not matter. I estimated the herd to consist of one or two bulls, between six and eight cows and at least one calf. I could definitely damage them, but would pay for it with my life.
The only option left was to wound as many of them with traps, as possible and to hope they died of their wounds. With this plan in mind, I went to work. I dug holes in the path, just large enough for a hoof, sharpened sticks and put them in the walls of the traps. Afterwards I covered the holes with some small sticks and leaves.
Spoiler: Spoiler
It should look somewhat like this [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1a/3b/06/1a3b06844cde892517db92d8d2a00212.jpg]
The herd would avoid the path, after the first animal got wounded, so I only got one chance. Accordingly, I dug a total of fourteen holes in the path behind the bottleneck to prevent them from just pushing through and littered both sides of it in similar fashion. Since I did not care that much about the meat, I coated the sharp sticks in some of the auroch feces I found on the trail and the belladonna ointment some villagers insisted on buying from me. I hoped the two measures to strengthen the lethality of my traps. It took me most of the remaining daylight to complete half of my planned pit traps. To prevent any animal from prematurely activating them, I dragged big branches on the path to keep them of using it. I made camp a couple hundred meter away and continued working the next day.
In the early afternoon, the holes were finished and since it was most likely, the herd would come to drink in the evening or early morning, I got some time on my hands and started to use my sturdiest rope to make big slings on their approximated head height. With a bit of luck some would get caught in them and ditched by the rest of the herd, so I could finish them off.
In the evening, I completed my preparations, dragged the branches off the path and prepared myself for a long wait. My activities hardly went by unnoticed and the area would be probably avoided by animals for a couple of days With that in mind I climbed the already prepared tree and sat down in a tree fork, behind a screen of branches I bound together in front of my hideout. The tree was located close to the path, in one of the escape routes the agitated herd would most likely take. I pulled out the book I carried with me and started to read, while waiting for my prey.