By now, Tetsu was used to getting up on the wrong side of the bed. Hell! It seemed like he found a new way to worsen his situation every time. Each time, his complaints got worse, and his injuries even more so. This time, however, Tetsu turned into a wise old coot overnight. He still complained and groaned, unable to celebrate his accomplishments like a normal human being.
Back on his feet, another experiment crossed his mind. He promptly punched himself in his stomach and slapped himself senseless.
“No, no, no, no…”
Tetsu’s only witness, the mind-tree, was concerned but didn’t intrude, as it very much enjoyed the show.
Tetsu accepts all of his mind-boggling skills before his curiosity tries to convince him otherwise. “Fuck you.” He flipped himself off. “I died for these skills and am not stupid enough to waste them on an experiment.” He tells himself.
With a solid kick, he breaks the root beside him. His leg hurt like hell, but he wanted the pain to be a reminder. A powerful reminder to never suggest another dumb theory or at the least, allow him to celebrate before trying to kill himself again. He turns to find roots in proximity to each other, sprouting up from the ground. Once he calmed down and took a proper look at his surroundings, he knew why.
Tetsu finds himself standing over a half-constructed coffin. “Seriously, this again! Can you not?”
The tree in question had transformed itself into a skeleton tree, by mind fuckery, of course, and out of concern, maybe? Like in the haunted movies, it shed all its leaves, which danced around its dried-up trunk. Tetsu didn’t mind the tree as it took way too long to create a coffin and based on how the system heals people in the tutorial.
“Yeah, I don’t have to worry. Also, a slow skill.” He concludes.
Can he make it out if he gets trapped? He didn’t want to find out.
“Someone can a skill’s full potential only if it’s at the same or higher level than its user, ideally higher.” Tetsu gets on his knees to inspect the half-constructed tomb. “Using a lower-level skill as a higher-level being will help level up the skill faster, but you will lose out on the process and its true potential.”
Tetsu suspects the roots to have risen at his position and not have any physical connection with the actual tree. Next, he inspects and bites a chunk out of the root he broke. “Edible.” He chews until his mouth overflowed with green foam. “High-tier magic, for sure.” He nods and approaches the tree.
With his engraved right palm placed on the dried tree trunk, he uses info. To his surprise, a piece of generic information, about a burnt tree entered his mind. Tetsu simultaneously checks his fatigue to increase by two points and comes to a conclusion.
“Fatigue is based on information I receive and Info doesn’t work without proper knowledge or over someone or something that knows how to deflect the effects.”
Tetsu felt a heaviness in his head, but it wasn’t because of information overload or fatigue. It was because of the dilemma created by his improved stats. He understood that the knowledge gained through titles or skills didn’t belong to him, yet it felt like the information had been with him for a long time.
Browsing through his newly improved stats he couldn’t help but wonder. “Wouldn’t my true self be lost with every new development?”
Name: Tetsü .K .Tenco.
Race: Human {---} Level: 01 | Initiate |
Class: Forger & Tracer
Affinity: Rune Force
Bond: N/A
--*--*----*--*--
[STATUS]
Health Pool: 60/84
Mana Pool: 110/140
Fatigue: 22
-*--*----*--*--
[INDIVIDUAL STAT’S]
Dex: 04 :: Flex: 04 :: Flash: 04
Stamina: 05 :: Rex: 04 :: Fort: 04
-*--*----*--*--
Senses: 14 :: Regen: 10 :: Tork: 8
-*--*----*--*--
Will power: 43 :: Perception: 33 :: Intellect: 32
Luck: 40
Free Points: 04
-*--*----*--*--
Titles--: Solitary Vanguard; Fanatic Rever; GlyphSage.
-*--*----*--*--
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Skills: 1. Overlay; 2. Conqueror’s Stride; 3. Echo Vault; 4. Rune Tracer.
Skills Tomb: 1. Incubate drop: 2. Mana Injection: 3. Match Stick: 4. Spot waster: 5. Spark: 6. Relaxing Wind: 7. Detect: 8. Florist.
------------------------------P-B-------------------------------
Tetsu heads to a puddle and shuts his mind off, body slamming into the puddle. With his improved stats and a surprisingly deep puddle, he didn’t feel a thing. Head submerged in water, he bubbled from time to time, checked his surroundings, and bubbled again.
Tetsu was back in top condition. He didn’t need any breaks or, more exactly, couldn’t afford any breaks. Yet he stayed still, with nothing specific in his mind. For once, he didn’t want to think or do anything.
After a while, he turns to face the clouds, sighs, and dips his head into the puddle again. Tetsu’s record was one minute before his mind screamed, questioning everything, answering them itself, striding off to wonderland, and bringing more questions back. A constant buzz is given in an overthinker’s mind, and when the day comes, when he doubts his reality, the buzz fades away ever so slightly. This day comes every week, yet no answer has ever presented itself.
How does one answer one’s purpose in life?
You doubt the system, your choices, the what-ifs, what-haves, and what-could’ve. Until you end up doubting reality to its very fabric.
Tetsu twists his fingers and makes a perfect circle. Shocked, he tries it over and over, every time getting a perfect circle. And just like that, he climbs out of his depression and begins drawing circles.
That’s an overthinker for you!
The question still lingered at the back of his mind. How long since he loses his true self?
A circle here, a line there, and a circle everywhere. Tetsu went ballasting, drawing circles and lines with his stick. Every line he drew was straight, as straight as can be, and every circle was perfectly round. He ran around a boulder, yet got a perfect circle.
“Damn, that’s some skill. Guess I’ve become a sage.”
Tetsu used the skill in the worst way possible, and that’s not what sage-hood meant, but still, the circles were impressive.
Out of breath and with his excitement topped up, a crazy smile grew on Tetsu’s face. “Time for level two.”
Games, in general, have a simple system of leveling up. You fight, you level. Rather simple and straightforward formulae that work in real life too, with a slight difference in how and what you fight, of course.
And for his first opponent, he knew who to pick.
Tetsu wished this was a game. Okay, maybe this was, but the pain of death is still way too surreal for a game. So, Tetsu decided this wasn’t a game and called it a fucked-up reality or perhaps a dream which spins off the eternal slumber.
He snatches these two words out of his head and throws them far away. “Happy thoughts, happy thoughts.”
Tetsu twists the stick around his neck and catches it with his right hand. “Info.” He casts as the sticks information flows into his mind.
“Rare artifact!” He turns a skeptical eye toward the tree. “How many graves are beneath me?”
Tetsu backed away from the tree, taking each step with the utmost care. “I am sorry, I didn’t know.” He said and bowed with every step.
Once at a safe distance, he points and yells at the tree. “That’s the reason you didn’t want me gathering info on you. You are a grave-making, grave-stealing tree.” He accuses the tree.
Back to planning an attack strategy, Tetsu finds two huge boulders he can roll and brings them closer to his destination. On one, he carved his name “Tetsu,” and on another, he carved Target.
After a few experiments, this is how his first alleged battle waged out.
Tetsu kicked up his feet, sighing and picking his ear as the Blade-grass sacrificed their brother one after another to kill him. “Sacrificial Grass Shuriken,” Tetsu named absurd attack.
Enraged, a grassling yanked his brother out of the soil and flung him at Tetsu with unbridled fury. In an instant, the serene rotation above the sacrificial grass transformed into a maelstrom, eclipsing the speed of a chainsaw. Accompanied by a crackling discharge and a residual verdant luminescence, the projectile hurtled unerringly, accelerating to astonishing velocities en route to Tetsu. Mere inches from cleaving him like a sausage, it deftly veered off course, irresistibly drawn like metal to a magnet, colliding with a boulder next to him. The once mundane brown rock now radiated a vivid green aura, every inch adorned with a lush coating of grass.
“Note to self. Grasslings are dumb… or am I just too wise?” Tetsu strokes his chin.
Finally, after seven days of survival, one hack, and seven more days of preparation, Tetsu won over some grasslings. This won’t be his official version of the story, though. No one would know his dumb luck, his brilliance, and even more dumb luck.
Only he and a certain tree shared this little secret of his.
------------------------------P-B-------------------------------
Tetsu rolls the boulder back into a safe zone and completes his notes on the experiment. He plucks out the grass, blasts them with mana and begins munching on the grass. He had to survive on something.
For seven days, Tetsu prepared for a rather simple experiment. Simple, in a sense, as working out the details almost killed him. Well, what didn’t at this point?
With a simple Ru’nic letter “Target” in mind, Tetsu wanted to create the red cloak effect. Similar to a bull focusing on the red cloak instead of the person waving said cloak. Tetsu wanted to deflect every attack on something else instead of him.
Now, in theory, it was a genius plan. When Tetsu drew a target on a boulder and expected it to work, that was dumb. How did a dumb person make a genius plan work? Simple… by almost dying four times a day as he tested out even more crazy theories.
Money laundering, for example, is a hack, but you can’t draw money on a piece of paper and expect it to turn to money. In a sense, Ru’nic letter “Target,” or any other letter, works the same. Once Tetsu had a clear picture, he went through several experiments, adding procedure to the mix.
Mana, rune, intent, knowledge, resources, and now procedure. The first five steps were hard, but Tetsu got them down. The latest step procedure was a bitch, no offense to other bitches, but this was the queen of bitches.
Take the rune “Target,” for instance, based on which opponent you are using it against, the opponent’s power, Intent laps, the procedure inside the procedure, and last but not least, you also require high mana reserves to deflect one messily attack. The same damn red cloak doesn’t work on every animal after all. Wave it at a lion and it will use it as a napkin to clean its mouth later.
Intense lapse is hard to explain, but think of it this way. If by ‘target’ you mean a place where an attack should be directed, then what do you mean by attack? Why should it deflect attacks sent on you? Why can’t it redirect your attacks as well?
Do you get the dilemma now?
The procedure inside the procedure means exactly that. A hidden procedure, hidden inside of an existing procedure. It’s super confusing to explain.
Not only that, but after you’ve got every step of the procedure right, once you are ready to fight, say a stupid bird shits on your rune, smudging it just a little, the entire freaking rune fails, and you nearly lose your goddamn head.
Any cut, smudge, or discrepancy on the rune and they become unresponsive. Just a dumb, stupid line on the walk.
Tetsu accomplished these incredible feats because of his skills, class, and title. With the title helping the most. Turns out that being a sage has its advantages.
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To keep it short and less messy, here are the sage’s notes.
1. Ru’nic letters comprise lines, dots, curves, and actual letters.
2. Individual letters are called runes.
3. You can create a million runes over a single object, but can only activate five at a time. Any over five and the symbol simply won’t work.
4. If two letters overlay, none of the first rune’s lines should be over the second rune.
[Let me further explain this in English letters. With the letter “K” you can make “I” & “V,” but you cannot do the opposite as the letter “V” would overlap with “I”. Makes sense? And yes, even the lightest gap between the two letters makes it a different letter.]
5. Rune is a set of instructions. Intent to enforce is done by infused mana, and mana is the required resource for successful completion.
[Means if you don’t have enough mana, even a spark won’t ignite. Payment first, fire later.]
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Five simple ass rules. These five were enough for Tetsu to regret his decision to reject a bond. They were gods. Who the fuck was he to belittle and ignore their generous offer? Stupid will. He would’ve been an excellent slave, ask Kile.
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