He would even be able to catch up with Everlyn. While he didn’t know the particulars of her build, he was sure that she only had, at best, a couple of free attribute points from her titles at the time that he knew her. She had probably since upgraded her class to something mythical, but even if that was the case, she had a hundred levels where she was getting seven or eight attributes rather than the twenty per class level that Tom was going to hopefully end up with. The promise these titles gave him was truly a tantalising prospect.
Better still, he was confident in his assumptions. So far, Underage Skill Development had progressed exactly how he had initially predicted it to progress. He hadn’t proven that the Spell and Trait versions existed, but he was certain about the Spell one, and, despite the early progress with Skills, he expected Spells to ultimately progress faster, because he had a road map to teach himself tier-three and four of healing, earth and lightning magics, which would rapidly grow his Spell Points.
Contrasting this with the skills, he only had access to a guide for tier-one and zero versions, which meant accumulating a large volume of points to contribute toward the title would be difficult. A single tier-four skill was worth sixteen tier-one versions, and a tier-six one thirty-six. Him developing a spell to tier-six was a possibility, because that is what the guides in the isolation room went up to. That meant that for spells he could imagine upgrading the title seven times, which would require two hundred and fifty-six points. For spells, that sort of outcome was possible. For skills, if he was limited to tier-one versions mastering that many, it was impossible.
The title version that he had been hopeful to uncover probably didn’t exist, given he hadn’t even received the first level for getting a legendary title. It was possible that the title version differed from the skill one and used a different metric, like the absolute number of titles, and ignored rarity. If so, then once he started developing the resistance titles, it would be awarded to him.
The final section of the sheet was not one that had been proven by the status screen ritual. Instead, it was based on his informed speculation, but was probably the most important section from Tom’s perspective. It contained the unknowns which were troubling him.
Puzzling Abilities.
Curse / Blessing – Uncontrollable Anger – Triggered by witnessing injustice and creates a berserker rage that increases attributes by 50% to ???.
Trait / Title – Immune to Mental Affects – Blocks all mind spells up to tier 5, continued but reduced effectiveness on higher tiered abilities.
Trait / Title – See Through Illusions – Pierce all illusions up to tier 5 (?). Has continued but reduced effectiveness on higher tiered abilities.
Trait / Title – Give Me More Stuff – Something that makes it more likely for adults to give me valuable items which appear to be tailored to what I need. Power unknown, but significant.
The first and last were the ones that he had the least information on, and the middle two he had been able to quantify somewhat with Dimitri’s aid. While the Uncontrollable Anger definitely existed, there were lots of details that remained uncertain. For example, anecdotally, it felt like the longer he had had without an event occurring, the more the pressure would build up. The moment anything happened, that would trigger the spell the extent it was magnified by was increased by the weeks since he had last blown up. Likewise, the level of the buff it granted was an unknown quantity.
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Give Me More Stuff was even more vague. There was no true evidence that it even existed. It was based on him being gifted unexpected objects from adults. In total, he had three gifts. Two of them were significantly more precious than what any other child had received, including those with not-parents tipping the scales. His good fortune could have been purely random, but Tom doubted it. Such an outcome beggared belief, but it was possible. From the latest conversation with Maurice and the earlier ones with Dimitri, he understood how valuable the trait he had gotten truly was. For it to have been gifted to him without some guiding force influencing events felt too improbable to be real, especially in the context of him also receiving a boost to his lightning affinity. This gift had almost caused the other adults to resort to fighting to stop him from getting it. One of those outcomes by itself might have been a giant stroke of fortune, and wouldn’t have been worth interrogating. But two of them? To Tom’s sensibilities, that was too much to be a coincidence, especially if you added the third gift. While it hadn’t been that expensive, the training ring had been a weird gift for a then-five-year-old, but for Tom’s future it was possibly as valuable as the others.
Despite not being as flashy, it was a significant piece of evidence that he possessed a title or trait like Give Me More Stuff. Tom considered himself to be logical, and that part of his mind scoffed at him imagining that he possessed such a powerful ability. However, there were issues that suggested him having something like that was not outlandish. There were the inconsistencies in his memories, his ridiculous precognition affinity, and the way everyone who discovered his true identity treated him.
It was possible that he could have earned a talent like the gifting ability. Not that it mattered. He had jotted the possibility down, and time would prove the accuracy of his speculation.
The days passed, and he watched the time on the Contender Challenger reduce until there was less than a week to go. Most days, he felt sick as he wondered if it was going to be enough. He was not one for self-delusions. While he had qualified, it had been an achievement gained by hitting the bare minimums rather than smashing past them. It was possible that all of his opponents would be better than him.
Every possible waking moment was dedicated to training, and, during the periods when he was stuck with others and his freedoms restricted, he actively focused on better understanding the intricacies of the orphanage for the first time. He wanted to know if there were any more training resources, like the lairs that he was using twice a week to hone his skills. His instincts screamed at him that he needed an extra something to get through the coming challenge.
The news was not good. His careful observations didn’t reveal anything new. They only confirmed that the longer sessions in the isolation room, which he required to train his resistances, didn’t become compulsory until he turned twelve. While he understood why that made sense from a psychological perspective, it did not gel with his plans. His aim was to acquire resistance titles, and only starting that process with one session a week at age twelve meant he wouldn’t physically have time to get all of them.
That night, as he entered the empty corridors on his way to train against the orcs, his eyes were drawn to the isolation rooms. Most of them were shut and needed to be signed into if he wanted to enter, but the ones on the ground floor were open, something he had noticed many times before but had not bothered to investigate.
Today, he wanted to check if they were the solution to his problem.