Burnout Reincarnation [SLOW BURN COZY 'MAGIC CRAFTING' KINGDOM BUILDING PROGRESSION] (LitRPG elements) [3 arcs done!]

"It looks like you're planning a strategy that relies on the abilities of others!" Gemmy said. "Would you like some help with that?"

"If only I could see your stats," Archmund said with a sigh.

"Stats? What does that mean?" Beatrice said.

"Short for statistics," Archmund said.

"Like… our age or height?" Rory said.

"Or how much money we have?" Beatrice said.

Gelias watched him silently and passively.

They weren't speaking the same language.

Sure, they were saying the same words in a tongue that was mutually intelligible, but they didn't know what he meant by stats.

Omnio had some understanding of statistics. He was sure of it. Otherwise, things like tax rates and crop yield and labor force participation would've been on shaky ground. There were a lot of things in an imperial bureaucracy that required at least the basic idea of statistics — and he had reason to believe that the Omnio had a rich intellectual culture, with some focus on geometry and statistics.

But when he said "stats", he was talking about something very different from GDP per capita or unemployment.

He was talking about RPG stats. The basic information that filled out a character sheet. Strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, charisma, luck. Information that described characters in roleplaying games, which the Omnio Empire was severely lacking in. He had no doubt that if such games existed, his father would have spoiled him with as many of them as he asked for.

In his past life, he would've thought these quantities were abstractions, aggregates, like other statistics. But here they were quantifiable, knowable attributes of all living things, and some dead ones. They translated roughly to the qualities they governed, grew with repeated use, and could be targeted for immense quick improvement. They were less measurement than parameter.

"Want to know someone's stats? An artifact in this Dungeon has you covered!" Gemmy said. "The Gemstone Card is a quick-bind Artifact that absorbs a minimal amount of personal magic in order to instantly Attune and provide Appraisal capabilities for a System Interface! By touching the Card to your Gemstone Tablet, you'll be able to view the stats of the Attuned Cardholder based on the depth of your Relationship!"

Sometimes it felt like this place was screwing with him. He could feel the Capital Letters screaming from the front of every other Word.

When his memories had first returned, he'd mentally classified this world as a "fantasy world", in relation to his previous life in a "mundane" world. Yet now it felt more and more like this place was wrapped in a bizarre cosmic bureaucracy that was parallel or worse, foundational, to the laws of physics. The world sang of fantastical monsters and myths in one breath and yet spat of paperwork and organization in the next.

His soul yearned for the whimsy and wonder, but his mind was drawn to the power of organization. And, unfortunately, he was good at it.

So just to be clear, there was a function that allowed him to get insights into the nature of other people's very being, but it was localized to the Dungeon or at least required an artifact from it and was presumably useless outside of it? That didn't make sense. It was almost too convenient.

"It may sound too convenient to you, but remember, the ancients and the dead got annoyed just like everyone else! And they don't have anywhere else to direct that annoyance! Enter… the Gemstone Card, a convenience artifact! The important part isn't anything inherent to them — it's that they Attune real fast and are convenient to carry around! An Attuned Gem is all you need — and this is a fast and relatively nonintrusive way for anyone, regardless of Skill or magic capacity or birthright, to get one!"

…Was Gemmy reading his thoughts?

"Yep! More accurately, I'm reading the flows of your magic. If you develop further Skills, I'll be able to enhance my displays of your Relationships and Titles, as well as any hidden perks they might unlock!"

As intrusive and disturbing as that was to realize, it was also incredibly useful. Mark Zuckerberg had allegedly invented Facebook to figure out whether girls on the Harvard campus had boyfriends or not; only later did it become an information hydra permeating every part of society. He would've killed for the level of fidelity he could've gotten from an artifact like this.

It was an all-in-one tool, and even if the only real gift it gave was information, information itself was one of the greatest weapons there was.

He let out a sigh. He wasn't going to throw away such a useful tool.

If there was a cost, he'd just pay it later. Hopefully much, much later.

The last issue, of course, was that he'd need them to tap their cards against his Gemstone Tablet. And that would give them a chance to actually look at it. And with a close enough look, they might actually start to put two and two together and realize what a powerful capability he had.

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"If you want to discreetly show limited functionality of your Gemstone Tablet to others, I can activate camouflage mode! This will disguise your Gemstone Tablet's capabilities as part of the Dungeon, bound to the desk! Would you like to do that?"

…Activate camouflage mode, please.

Rory, Mary, and Beatrice all tapped their Gemstone Cards on his tablet, now disguised to look like hardwood (or so he was told; to his eyes, it still looked like the same shimmering blue crystal it always had — another potential application of the same veiling magic used by the Princess Angelina?). Its surface rippled like water, and their stats loaded in for his viewing pleasure.

"Gelias," Archmund said. "Don't you have a card?"

"I would prefer not to," Gelias said.

Right. Gelias had said the cards were "hungry". Archmund wasn't sure that was right; They were more convenient. They were faster and easier. But they were also far smaller. If they had downsides, he suspected similar to those as Gemstone Gear — lock in, restricted possibility, limited future.

"If that's alright with you," Gelias added hurriedly.

Archmund shrugged. "Why wouldn't it be?"

Gelias was relatively strong and skilled. There wouldn't be any danger if Archmund treated him as roughly at the same level as Rory and Beatrice. And if he didn't want to link in to the Dungeon's magical hierarchy, Archmund could respect that. He'd jumped in head-first. If Gelias wanted to exercise prudence when there was so much power for the taking, it was his loss.

Rory:

Beatrice:

Mary:

His intuitions for their stats were largely correct. Rory was strong and sturdy, but relatively inflexible and not as intellectually gifted. He was heavily weighted towards the physical stats.

Beatrice was almost as smart as he was. Her physical stats were ever-so-slightly less than his baseline, though he wasn't sure if that was because of less training, Gem bonuses, or innate gender differences. She was his cousin, so it made sense they had slightly similar profiles, but it surprised him that it seemed like she had more baseline Wisdom than him, though overall they had an equal total stat due to bonuses from his gear. She certainly didn't act like it.

Maybe these stats didn't actually mean what he thought they did.

Mary's Intelligence was on par with the nobles. Her physical attributes were lagging, which was to be expected from early childhood malnutrition, but they were far better than he had feared. They were almost as high as Beatrice's.

The nobles were highly uncharismatic. Or rather, normally charismatic. Mary, presumably, was charismatic from having to cater to his whims.

To be fair, the nobles had spent all their time talking with each other. They hadn't needed to be socialized by spending time with other peasants. They'd had private tutors, of course — Beatrice's parents had mentioned that much — but that was no consolation for socializing with other people and also reading Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

And so he felt inspired.

He was sure, with some practice, that he could alter the attributes of the Gems he was producing.

His Gemstone Sword enhanced his physical attributes. His Gems enhanced his mental attributes. His Gemstone Cufflinks gave him a major boost to his Charisma.

Since he controlled the Dungeon and the Monsters — at least for now — he could make Gems that patched up their weak spots. He could bring them to his level, or at least give them the tools to match him, should they have the ambition to use them.