Some Experimentation
Arthur woke up to the dried blood and gore of his fallen enemies. A moment later he noticed the crow that was on his shoulder. Though it flew away when he turned his head.
He woke up and checked his status once again
[Arthur Black]
[Race-(human (G grade)-level 7
Class-Knight (G grade)-level 7
Profession- N/A
Grade: - ‘G’ level 7
Strength-40 Intelligence-20
Agility-15 Widom-10
Vitality-75 Perception- 20
Will-15
Endurance-900 Mana-1000
(Health 1500/1500)
Free points:35
Skills:
Race: - Identify {Unique}, Language {Unique}, Star-Touched Generation {Unique}
Class: - Block {Common}, Slash {Common}, Parry {Common}, Counter {Common}, Chop {Common}, Path of the sword {Uncommon}, Battlefield Awareness {Common}, Knightly presence {Rare}
Profession: - N/A
]
He had to check what three of those skills were still, so he clicked on them.
[Path of the Sword: - Your first oath on your path as a knight. Deal increased damage with Knightly swords. Knightly Swords are many times classified as longswords.
Battlefield awareness: - Your mind never loses focus during the heat of the battlefield allowing you to perceive hidden enemies, unseen attacks or out of focus threats more easily.
Knightly Presence: - Your will as a knight made manifest. Let your enemies feel the brunt of your attention. This effect decreases with increase in targets willpower. All allies within a small radius will have 5% of all stats increased.]
Well damn, it sucked not having allies but at least the fear ability was good. He hade 35 free points however and only an inkling on how to use them. An increase in will was needed for Knightly Presence but did he want to uses even a handful of points for one skill.
Strength could be gained in Knight levels and Vitality was already pretty high. However, he still needed health just to be safe. Looking at his stats 10 points in Wisdom and 5 in Agility and Will were required just so that they were at the same level as the rest.
As for the rest of the 15 points, he decided to go 5 in Intelligence, Perception and Agility, Afterall those were the things he was good at initially.
[Arthur Black]
[Race-(human (G grade)-level 7
Class-Knight (G grade)-level 7
Profession- N/A
Grade: - ‘G’ level 7
Strength-40 Intelligence-25
Agility-25 Widom-20
Vitality-75 Perception- 25
Will-20
Endurance-900 Mana-2000
(Health 1500/1500)
Free points:0
Skills:
Race: - Identify {Unique}, Language {Unique}, Star-Touched Generation {Unique}
Class: - Block {Common}, Slash {Common}, Parry {Common}, Counter {Common}, Chop {Common}, Path of the sword {Uncommon}, Battlefield Awareness {Common}, Knightly presence {Rare}
Profession: - N/A
]
Ok. Stats figured out, now to go do the rest of the checklist, First task- Figuring out mana.
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After finding a river to wash the bloodstains off of his clothes, Arthur sat down and meditated in order to recreate the events of the fight.
The System said something about an Arcane Overload, and he experienced some sort of mental state with the sudden increase in clarity and the appearance of literal mana in the air surrounding him.
However, even after a solid ten minutes of slow breathing and trying to calm his mind Arthur couldn’t see mana again. He thought deeper and deeper on his new skill. Arthur decided on using a tried-and-true method of figuring something out. Analysis.
There were several factors that could affected the Overload.
1. He was in a fight.
2. He had a weapon in his hand.
3. The level of focus was a bit different in battle when compared to what he was doing now.
4. The mage was actively using a magic skill most likely affecting the mana in the air
A few of those he ruled out. 2 couldn’t be a condition since the sensation spread across his entire body and then to his blade. While Arthur couldn’t differentiate between the different types of mana what was clear was that the mage was using a fire skill, while the Arcane-Overload-causing-mana, tasted well ... mostly tasteless.
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That left 1 and 3. If 1 affected the state then he couldn’t access Mana unless he was in a fight.
Arthur disliked this one on a gut feeling. Plus, if Professions existed then wouldn’t someone have tried to augment his/her profession using magic or better yet, have completely magical professions like potion crafter or enchanter?
This left 3 as the only viable option unless he was missing something. Arthur didn’t believe that to be the case. He once again tried to recreate the feeling of battle but as one would expect, without a proper battlefield that proved extremely difficult for him, a man with no battlefield experience before the System.
For hours he tried his luck scaring off smaller monsters and animals with presence, something which enhanced his knowledge about the skill quite a bit.
Finally, after a good five hours of barely interrupted practice, he found something.
His eyes tingled as the world of mana was brought to his eyes once more. He spent another hour or so simply trying to move this new substance, these small sand like particles hovering in the air. In that time Arthur searched deeply into himself, trying to something, anything that could help him and after a few minutes he succeeded.
[Gained new skill: Mana Sense: -
Your perception of this new world increases once more, allowing you to feel the new desert-like plane that has emerged with this new Era.
Allows you to see mana if concentrating]
‘Niceee finally a mana skill after a few days of having mana and nothing to use it for. Granted Mana Sense did nothing for combat, but perhaps it could be used to see through traps or illusions, since there is no way, someone hasn’t found out how to create them.’
Speaking of days, there was a Countdown given at the start, right? Arthur barely thought about it when a loud ping went off in his head and a blue screen appeared in front of him.
[Time left: 1:4:4:09]
4 hours and nine minutes till the third day of the tutorial passes. Its slightly startling to think that merely 3 days ago his life was merely a bit boring. Another thing brought up by the timer was the level requirement to pass the tutorial, or rather to live through the tutorial.
Arthur needed to be G grade level 15 atleast in order to continue. He was level 7. 8 levels in 11 days. Even if he levelled up by 1 per day, he would breach the requirement, this meant one very important thing. Experimentation!!
Which would be why one would have found Arthur in the middle of five level 3 baby monkeys slaughtering them like cattle. Granted there was a better reason for this than simple sadistic carnage. This massacre was to find out how easy it was to gain levels.
Turns out, not very easy. Thankfully the other experiment of trying to create a safer version of arcane overload was going more smoothly. He Arthur figures out a way to feel the innate mana present within him and move it around, which unfortunately for him took mana and a little bit of endurance. This led to him gaining the skill
[Mana recovery: - Access the mana of the world around you with nary a breath. Allows the user to replenish mana reserves by breathing]
Finishing up the five critters he stopped and once again tried moving the mana flowing within him.
‘The mana cost has to be because I am not some Mage or because I do not have any skill regarding this.’
A few hours of repeated exercise and using mana breathing to replenish exhausted reserves is what it took to be able to move it comfortably, he noticed that the mana cost went down every successful iteration. Opening his closed eyes to blood and gore, for the second time in four days. He looked at his mana and saw that it was little over halfway full, as he started heading to the river in order to drink water and relieve himself, not necessarily in that order, Arthur finally realised something that never occurred to him in the beginning of all this madness. Food. Arthur had only eaten berries and fruits that looked safe to eat after thorough identification. He hadn’t had meat in days. Looking back those turtles would made good snacks, wouldn’t they? Perhaps he should start looking for them again.
Barely 20 or so metres away Arthur heard a loud wail come from the general direction of the baby slaughter.
“Now that I think about this, babies generally have fathers … and mothers, well fuck this I’m out.”
Trying out his new mana movement ability he tried infusing mana to his legs in an attempt of what happened before and booked it to his general ‘home’ area.
A half hour later a bedraggled Arthur appears in front of the first river he had seen since he came into this world. Its waters were clear and the faster areas had white froth bubbling at the top of it. He took a small canteen-like object he had … borrowed from the halfling earlier, using it to scoop up the water. After a bit of rest, the young Knight went in the opposite direction of the baby monkeys, unaware of the pair of red eyes that followed him.
While walking Arthur played around with his magic finally understanding how to empower his entire body with mana. A green aura lightly floated off his body in what Arthur assumed was a literal visible representation of his mana. It wafted off his body extremely fast and the entire process was very cost inefficient, so he had no plans on using it yet.
Suddenly Arthur realised something. The forest was too quiet, the birds sounded far away, the calls of wild animals were nearly silenced. Something was wrong. He walked into somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. A territory that so wasn’t his, the mere thought of it being his invoked laughter in his subconscious. A loud bark of anger erupted from his right. Turning around so hard he was sure pre system he would have broken his neck, he stood in front of a large completely bipedal, black furred monkey. A female one by it looks
[Feral Simian {Enraged} (Level 9)]
“Ah, the consequences of my action, how lovely to see you”
Clearly the shock of encountering a six-and-a-half-foot primate had made his humour quite a bit worse. He instantly unsheathed his sword before seeing a far larger threat up in the trees.
[Bruiser Ape (Level ??)]
‘Question marks! I beg your pardon System, what’s the point of having an identify skill if I can’t Identify creatures.’
Ping!
[Creature is beyond your League.]
‘Oh, a System confirmed badass. Never mind please ignore me.’
Another bark of anger. He focused on the mother once more. She crouched and, in an instant, leaped over to maul him.
In two great bounds she reached him and in swipe that took barely a second she swung her great fist at him. Only, she forgot one thing. Arthur is only one level lower.
‘Primates were stronger than us before the System, no reason for that to change now, plus she’s higher level the chances that I have dodging that attack are higher.’
Stepping out her range and stepping back in quickly he gripped his sword with both his hands tightly and Thrust.
Stabbing her left flank the great ape grabbed his sword and ripped it out of his hands flinging it somewhere far away.
“Well shit”, Arthur audibly gulped.
Once again, the enraged mother swung, this time it connected. Pushed back by the sheer force of the punch, Arthur heard a few dangerously louds cracks. Grunting and spitting everywhere he punched wildly at the monkey, a few of the shots landed for all the good it did him.
Aiming for a more precise hit he punched wherever the animal’s solar plexus would have been. He jumped away when the beast hunched over, gasping.
Analysing the situation, he decided to try out the experimental technique. Directing man to his arms, he punched the simian’s gut and then it suddenly clicked.
He felt as if he finally found what he was missing. The mana flowed through his arms and out of his fists, expelled with enough force to break through its skin. Another fast punch to the gut. The great ape started coughing up blood. Inhaling a massive amount of mana, he ended the 1-2-3 combo with an absolute haymaker to the face. Using presence to make it immobile for a few seconds, the final punch broke bone and caused brain matter to splatter everywhere.
Green mana wafted everywhere around him, Arthur calmly looked at the Bruiser ape.
It stared back with absolute disinterest. Then all of a sudden it cracked a large toothy smile, it jumped away. Hopping away from Arthur, who exhaled a heavy breath he didn’t know he was holding.
‘God, that thing couldn’t have killed me so fucking fast.’
For the second time that day he once again ran away from a crime scene. This was getting old really fast. Atleast he got some level out of this.
[Knight level 7 -- > 8(G grade)]
[Human level 7 -- > 8(G grade)]
+15 Strength
+100 Endurance
+10 stat points
[Arthur Black]
[Race-(human (G grade)-level 8
Class-Knight (G grade)-level 8
Profession- N/A
Grade: - ‘G’ level 8
Strength-55 Intelligence-25
Agility-25 Widom-20
Vitality-75 Perception- 25
Will-20
Endurance-623/1000 Mana-800/2000
(Health 1000/1500)
Free points: 10
Skills:
Race: - Identify {Unique}, Language {Unique}, Star-Touched Generation {Unique}
Class: - Block {Common}, Slash {Common}, Parry {Common}, Counter {Common}, Chop {Common}, Path of the sword {Uncommon}, Battlefield Awareness {Common}, Knightly presence {Rare}
Profession: - N/A
]