“Display Status.”
Bonus Feat ‘Found You!’ automatically applied.
“Fuck fuck’s sake!” It came out jumbled and probably scared the girl laying on the ground on a towel bed, but I was too pissed off to care. The stabbing divine-tattoo gun hit me again, this time on my mouth. In my mouth? I turned to find a mirror and used the reflective glass top of the nightstand to look at my face. I didn’t see anything.
On a hunch I flipped my bottom lip and saw ‘Found You!’ on the inside. Whatever, at least I wasn’t looking more like a hipster/convict/influencer/douchebag crossbreed. No offense to ‘tattoo people’, but their shit was more of a choice, less of a divine-needle-gun-raping. I sighed, at least it wasn’t prison rules. Shit. Where was the nearest prison? That seemed like a good thing to keep in mind for future wanderings.
Feats. Right.
I didn’t bother asking about the newest one, it was obvious and I didn’t really need to see any more of Gabriel-sass than absolutely necessary. That stupid asterisk though. I HAD JUST CLEARED THEM.
“Fuc- Forget it. What is the Bonus Feat, ‘Found You!’” I maybe, possibly, kind-of yelled it and heard a ‘yeep’ come from my guest. I couldn’t help but chuckle. That must have been scary as shit to hear that yelled with a tattooed, potentially-naked stranger just a few feet away.
Found You!: You probably would have gotten this earlier if you weren’t so damnably lazy about it. Maybe it would have even counted as intentional effort on your part. You’re lucky this ability runs passively.
Okay, so maybe I would wait to check them for appropriate times.
So, I had a few ideas for tomorrow.
Order of Operations. Get everyone to pair up and meet each of the pairs. No, I wouldn’t talk to them all but ideally that would help, I guess? Next was to… Shit that approach sounded weak and I was the one who just came up with it. I was kind of lost.
I raised my hand in front of me and pushed Will into it as I clenched my fist. A sword’s hilt formed in my hand, as if space itself consolidated. I was definitely holding a sword though it was difficult to see it beyond the small edging of light that surrounded its edges. I waved it back and forth as I studied it. It was some sort of long-sword.
Besides the initial drain from forming it, there was a small, almost unnoticeable Fortitude draw to maintain the blade. I stabbed it into the floor and it pierced easily enough then dissipated as… as best as I can describe, reality unfolded. I repeated it, thought it was more difficult this time, and pushed more and more Will into the sword until I felt like the Will construct was going to burst. I leaned over the bed and stabbed it into the floor. It burst, the only sound was the shattering of wood, the explosion itself was silent. Interesting.
“What was that? Is someone attacking?”
“No, nobody’s attacking. Go back to sleep.”
I pushed Will into my hand again, but instead of my Will following the pattern and ‘guiding’ itself to easily form the Will-Blade, it just dissipated into a series of weak formless Will bursts I’d been using, though it was more of a leaky faucet feeling. I shivered, it felt bad to do that.
I repeated it, slower this time, and managed to form up to the hilt, somewhat at least, before it dissipated again. I felt my Fortitude continue to drain with each attempt. Damn. It didn’t feel like an impossible thing though, just extremely difficult.
Well there were some things to learn, even with unsuccessful attempts. Skills weren’t actually required to ‘use’ Skills. It just made using them way easier. Like learning to farm, harvest, process, and eventually make dinner vs going to a supermarket and popping something in the microwave.
I stayed awake until I heard her breathing settle again, then passed out myself.
Wait. Scratch that. My eyes shot open. My status screen read 22 Feat Points. What the hell was I doing? I’d basically shown most of my tricks and abilities to various parties here. I needed to start spending those. If I couldn’t escape the Penitent System to spend some me-time on my thoroughly shattered Mental Health Week, then I’d just have to suck it up and use the damned thing.
“Display List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points.”
Tier 3 Class Ghetto-Hedge Knight List of Purchasable Skills.
Customized Skill Generation… Unavailable.
Skill Generation and Evolution Remain under Limited-Discovery Mode Restrictions.
Seeking Supervisor Authorization… Unavailable.
Penitent System Limited-Discovery Skill Generation and Evolution… Online.
Detecting Heathen User ‘Doubting Thomas’ currently possessed Abilities, Skills, and Qualities.
Detected: Knight SubClass
Detected: Hedge-Knight
Detected: Will User - Raw/Unaspected
Detected: inactive Light-Affinity
Detected: 90th Percentile Feat Acquisition
Skill Selection Based on Abilities, Skills, and Qualities + User Class Selection.
[Display Ending Text here]
[Display]
Before I even looked at skills I tried to keep up with the scrolling text. After the next line finished, the prior line disappeared. ‘Skill Generation and Evolution’? Yes please. Finally some sort of edge. I noted ‘Abilities, Skills, and Qualities’, and burnt that into my mind.
Other things that stood out was ‘Knight SubClass’, which presumably meant ‘Hedge-Knight’, raw or unaspected Will user, and, of course, my inactive Light-Affinity.
90th Percentile?! I guess I was kind of okay being in the top 10% of Humanity, at least as far as ‘Feat Acquisition’ went, but still… There were that many people ahead of me? Bullshit.
For the final part, it was always reassuring to see the last bit with the unfilled flavor text. Good to know that Gabriel isn’t taking his job too seriously. He couldn’t even be bothered to populate the last lines.
“Display List of Abilities. Display List of Possessed Abilities. Display List of Currently Possessed Abilities.”
What?! It worked and it sucked. The list was entirely too long to bother reading. Entirely, outrageously too long. I scrolled down and it took more than a second to even get below ‘A’. Nope, no way. No Search Bar either. Not doing it.
…
Abdominal Exercises … Airplane Etiquette Airplane Facts … Ant Knowledge Anteater Knowledge …
The Ability List listed absolutely everything. When I spied ‘Put-Put Golf’ the mindless infinite scroll stopped.
Useless, absolutely useless crap.
“Display List of Currently Possessed Skills.”
List of Currently Possessed Skills
Much MUCH more manageable.
Will Blade Evil Eye Heal Thyself Eyes where they’re needed Null Wave Mini-Map Bulwark Speaks with Animals
Since I already had it open, I searched through the Ability List to try and find something specific. Hmm. I opened my List of Qualities. My List of Possessed Qualities was exactly the same, except it now had one more addition.
Adept of Will
-Just above a beginner, good for you
How Earned: Unlocked your Will, pushed stuff, pushed stuff in weird ways, other stuff
I pushed out Will and knocked the phone nearly off the nightstand. I stopped before knocking it completely down. I didn’t want to wake Meredith again.
I was getting pretty good at that. Would it be the absolute end of the world to get a slightly more useful tooltip? Well, I guess it already was the end of the world. My hope for helpful tooltips should probably just die right along with the way the world had been.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Scrolling through the near-infinite Ability LIst I couldn’t help but notice that many of the things on here were either A) Useless filler bullshit or B) Stuff I wasn’t really that good at.
The List of Skills was both stuff I’d purchased through the Purchasable Skill List, like the Will Blade, or, like ‘Null Wave’, something I had learned on my own.
Yes, I tried verbal prompts to get more information. Yes I tried MANY different verbal queries. No they didn’t work. NONE OF THEM WORKED.
Annoyed, I still had points to spend. That raised my mood a bit. Time to go shopping.
“Display List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points.” No wonder I didn’t open my menus too much, it was a p.i.t.a. to have to verbalize it. The list moved to the top of all the open windows, I had forgotten I already had it open.
I briefly reviewed the entire list, then returned to the top couple of skills.
Oh, there were new options? I like that.
List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points:
MiniMap Upgrade v2
Description: Historic Entity Tracking; Persistent Aspects
How Earned: Use your Minimap effectively
Cost: 5 Feat Points
AURA
Description: You’re halfway there anyways. You should have already had this done.
How Earned: This is essential Tier 2 stuff. Maybe you should check your List of Purchasable Skills with Feat Points more often.
Feat Cost: 7 Feat Points
IMBUE WILL
Description: Do more stuff with your Will.
How Earned: Imbue a Will construct with even more Will.
Feat Cost: 6 Feat Points
NULLIFICATION WAVE
Description: Use your Will to nullify other’s. You kind of know how to do this already. Though, there’re some tricks your mud monkey brain hasn’t figured out yet.
How Earned: Turn your formless will into Will;
Feat Cost: 5
This was easy, there was absolutely no way I’d be spending a single point on any sort of Will Skill since these were completely trainable. Just a point sink for laziness and it’s not like I had a bunch of stuff on my plate beyond survival.
There was a bit of an exception for a Skill like the Will Sword. Its will-construction was pretty damn complex and would have been entirely too difficult to figure out on my own. Even having experience forming it, recreating what I knew was difficult. You have to want it, then will it to form the complex pattern required all while clearly holding in your mind the parts you’ve already formed. Even thinking about the process kind of made my head twist.
Even if I had known that it was possible to form the Will-Blade, it wouldn’t have been nearly enough, so purchasing something like that made sense. It would have taken months, at least, or maybe I would have never figured out how to do it on my own.
All that said, now that I was becoming more familiar with what was possible, I formed a new ‘working strategy’. The names of the Skills let me know what was possible and learnable, then I could practice that and get it for free. Take the Penitent System’s limited bullshit and use it to my advantage. I liked it the more I thought about it. For now, moving on. ‘Knight’ Skills were next.
INVIOLABLE
Description: You want what you want, more importantly, you don’t want what you don’t want.
How Earned: -Have your personal sovereignty tested -Bulwark -AURA Required
Feat Cost: 5
Developing Aura is at the top of my to-do list. You know, when I can get to it.
RUSH
Description: Bend reality to shorten the distance between you and your foe
How Earned: Charge at stuff; Offensive Knight-based; Will
Feat Cost: 5
STAND YOUR GROUND
Description: Bulwark + Knight: Force yourself into a space of pure defense. See the patterns of attack, immovable while active.
How Earned: This is some real Knight stuff right here. Basically a keystone Skill.
Feat Cost: 8 Feat Points
THIS IS MY ARMOR
Description: Defensive attributes of designated ‘armor’ is increased
How Earned: Basic-Knight shit. Duh.
Feat Cost: 3
THIS IS MY SHIELD
Description: Defensive attributes of a designated ‘shield’ is increased
How Earned: Blocked stuff with your shield; Basic Knight stuff
Feat Cost: 3
Rush seemed good, I liked the idea of ‘bending reality’, I mean, come on. The idea of being able to ‘totally-not-magically’ close-the-distance was a valuable one. Sounding cool was just a side-perk.
I had a small revolver and a double-barrelled shotgun, and while that might be enough to have the most ‘fire-power” here, I doubted that would be the case long-term. It was the US and there were plenty more powerful firearms, relying on my meager stockpile was not realistic as a long-term plan.
I reflected on the shotgun’s impact against Ron. While it had definitely hurt him, it had only hurt him. It was 12-gauge, it should have turned his torso into funfetti, instead it had damaged him less than my magic-sword had and my sword wasn’t even blessed to hurt random people, unless he was cursed. He didn’t seem cursed though.
Hm. Stand Your Ground looked and sounded great, almost like a keystone skill. Well, actually it was a keystone skill, it said it right there. Costly and it would almost definitely be great. If I wasn’t alone. Defense wasn’t likely to ever be in my advantage, especially not an ‘active’ defensive state.
So while ‘active defensive skills’ were out of the question, at least for now, ‘passive’ was another story. Armor and Shield, I’d probably take the pair. At a minimum, the shield skill. Probably, after all, I wasn’t done with the list.
The next trough of skills had to do with Oaths. Interesting.
OATHBREAKER
Description: Break your oath before your lord can. Reduced Penalties for Breaking Oaths
How Earned: Typical Hedge-Knight skill, you’re not the most trustworthy lot after all.
Feat Cost: 4
MAYBE ANOTHER TIME M’LORD
Description: There are many valid opinions on the ‘best part of valor’. You know what the answer is? That’s easy, Survival.
How Earned: Hedge-Knight; you know when it’s time to run like a little *****
Feat Cost: 3
TECHNICALLY M’LORD
Description: It’s all in the fine print. Instinctively understand the little loopholes of Oaths.
How Earned: Negotiate an Oath; Hedge-Knight
Feat Cost: 2
HOLD THEM TO THEIR WORD
Description: Harshen the penalties of Oath-breaking against you. Hedge-Knights gotta look out for themselves.
How Earned: Hedge-Knight
Feat Cost: 2
At least the costs were somewhat more reasonable, still pricey though. If Oaths had this many Skills around them, they must be legitimately useful, or at least powerful. Hedge-Knight, if I can remember properly, were like wandering knights. European ‘Ronin’, essentially. Except they weren’t, ya know, weeb-bait.
As I considered the list, I could actually purchase quite a few of the skills. I instantly recognized the dangerous thought. The ‘I just got paid’ feeling you got right before your most recent paycheck evaporates into distant smoke. More important than a paycheck, Feats were worth far more than any currency. Each Feat had to be earned through entirely unreasonable amounts of effort, dumb luck, and most likely while involved in a life-death situation.
Worst of all, they also weren’t farmable. It’s not difficult to guess when some situation was likely to give you a Feat point for solving or surviving it, but I couldn’t just tee-off on squirrels by the side of the road and have them roll in.
Oathbreaker was tempting… but I wasn’t really interested in breaking an Oath, at least at the moment. Moving on to the next Oath related skill, Technically m’lord, it was easy to figure that knowing the ‘fine print’ about Oaths couldn’t possibly be a bad thing.
My best guess is that it’s likely some sort of enhanced deep-intuition crap instead of hard knowledge. That was still useful, especially with how much I’ve been relying on Oaths.
Hold Them to Their Word was a natural pairing to punish someone for breaking their Oath with me. I wasn’t sure what would happen with breaking an Oath and wasn’t particularly interested in commencing human-testing with myself. Still, it was a valid consideration on whether or not I had to have the Skill before the other side broke their Oath, or if I could purchase it after the fact.
Regardless, to be effective, I had a feeling that choosing not to pair it with the Technically purchase would be a major mistake. Gotta know the rules to hang someone by them. From how much I was using Oaths since literally just learning about them, it really seemed like a mistake to not have some way to make them more enforceable.
Maybe another time, m’lord, seemed out of place with the rest of the Hedge-Knight skills. Ignoring Gabe’s comments about my inclination towards escaping hostile situations, I realized that I had been too focused on offense and defense and had completely forgotten about utility skills.
This was absolutely an ‘escape skill’. Escape skills are even more important than additional defense or dps, especially essential when you can’t just quickload 1 minute before a Boss Fight. My nemesis wolf probably had one of those and I hadn’t been able to kill that bitch because of it. Presumably. I would kill an entire forest of baby animals for an analysis skill.
“Purchase Skill with Feat Points: ‘Maybe Another Time m’lord’.”
I wasn’t sure if it was the best thing to do, realistically though, how could I be sure about anything with this crappy system, but for 3 Feat Points I considered it a steal for an ‘oh shit’ button.
After rereading through the list, I also purchased Rush for 5 and This is My Shield for 3. I’d just spent a total of 11 points before I knew it and now had just 12 measly points left. Or maybe more, since I hadn’t opened my Status again. I really didn’t want to risk more tattoos. Respecting my body autonomy, I settled myself to get ready to sleep.
I had basically dismissed the minimap skill. A) It was stupid expensive and B) It was vague as fuck. How many times was I expected to upgrade this thing beyond being mildly useful? I mean, I guess it was kind of useful. Still, at 5 points it felt a bit too pricey for my tastes.
I grimaced, that sucked to be down so many already. The monopoly money feeling had faded and, even though I knew I had made good purchases, buyer’s remorse started to creep in. Reviewing my new acquisitions, they really did seem like smart purchases.
I wanted to test them but before I knew it, I was asleep.