NOVEL NEXT Chapter 41: What Madness is This?
<Alex, Endure - Secure, High School Gymnasium>
Alex laid Grant down in a cot in the corner of one of the side rooms, Kaylee hovering at his shoulder, even as Lenka and Natasha filled her in.
Bless those women. I have no interest in being the bearer of this news.
Pilar and a few of the non-Initiates were helping to process the newly recovered students, faculty, and staff—as well as the visiting nurses and professionals—adding them into the gymnasium's setup.
Kaylee was clearly torn, as she needed to be involved in what was going on out there, but she was clearly very concerned with Grant's health, even with Lenka and Natasha's assurances.
Finally, Alex sighed and interjected, "I'll stay here with him. I have to advance my race and do a class specialization."
They all looked at him, Natasha hiding a smile. Lenka frowned. "Wait… how did you only hit level 5 now?"
He waved her off. "That's hardly important. I'm going to do what I need to do, and I can do it sitting next to Grant."
Kaylee still looked conflicted, but when someone started shouting back in the main room of the gym, her gaze hardened. "Fine. Keep him safe."
As she left, Alex looked to the other two women. "Keep her safe, yeah?"
Then each nodded, following after the woman they'd put in charge.
Alright, let's see what this is.
"Racial Advancement."
Racial Advancement Underway
Alex gasped, his Basic Mana Sense showed power flowing into him, seeming to seep out of the very air around him before permeating his body.
The feeling was reminiscent of being blown up like a balloon. I really hope I'm not turning blue. I swear that I didn't eat questionable bubblegum…
Even so, he wasn't really changing size.
Interestingly, he felt like his Life energy that he'd only recently been sensing was gobbling up as much of the mana as it could.
That seems good… I hope? He thought for a moment then shrugged internally. In for a penny, in for a pound.
With that decided, he began to move his Life within himself, trying to help it snap up as much of the mana as possible.
This actually seemed to lessen the swollen feeling he was experiencing.
Huh. I hope that—
System Notice
Error detected. Insufficient mana concentration within the Initiate's body for Racial Advancement.
Correcting.
Alex felt his eyes widen as the amount of power flowing into him turned from a trickle to a flood.
The feeling went from uncomfortable to painful to agonizing in an instant, and he found he couldn't even scream in pain.
He couldn't draw breath.
He couldn't do anything physical.
But he still had very basic command of his Life energy via his Basic Life Transfusion skill.
He did his best to continue to help his Life energy gobble up the incoming mana.
He wasn't aiming for gain anymore. Instead, he was desperately hoping to relieve the pressure—relieve the pain—in the only way he could think of.
It didn't work.
It did help a little, but it didn't alleviate it for long.
Finally, there was another System notice, and the over-inflated feeling seemed to sink into him, where it somehow became more bearable before fading into the background entirely.
Racial Advancement Complete
Life-Aspected Human (Rare), F
This human is infused and deeply tied to the energy of Life itself.
This restricts the person from following certain paths, while opening others before them.
This is a Rare Race within the System and has proportionally higher stat gains per level.
This is a Rare Race within the System and has proportionally slower level gain.
Life-Aspected Races calculate Health Points(HP) as Physical Fortitude x20 instead of the standard 10x
Life-Aspected Races calculate Stamina Points (SP) as 10x Physical Fortitude + Mental Fortitude instead of the standard 5x
Stat Gains per Level
+4 all stats, including allocatable points
Advances to
Life-Aspected Human (Rare), E
You are infused and deeply tied to the energy of Life itself.
This restricts you from following certain paths, while opening others before you.
This is a Rare Race within the System and has proportionally higher stat gains per level.
This is a Rare Race within the System and has proportionally slower level gain.
Base Health Points(HP) is Physical Fortitude x25
Base Stamina Points (SP) as 20x the sum of Physical Fortitude + Mental Fortitude
Stat Gains per Level
+8 all stats, including allocatable points
Apology Tutorial Notice:
Racial Rarity Advancement Quest has become available upon Advancement
Alex groaned. From what he could tell, there was almost no difference in the base description except it was more personalized, using 'you' more than 'this human' and the like.
He did get a bit more health and stamina for his Fortitude, and double the stats—which was awesome—but nothing else had changed.
What's this? There was something called a Racial Rarity Advancement Quest.
As if his thinking about it called up the notification—which it probably did—the quest window opened.
Racial Rarity Advancement Quest
Your Race is Rare, but it could be Rarer. (Well, Epic.)
Complete the tasks to allow your Race to actualize some more of its latent potential.
Increase the power of your Life Force by whatever means you deem best (42/100)
Absorb the Core of a source of Life (0/1)
Make a meaningful Contribution to your group or tribe (3/3)
He already had some progress on the first part, and he immediately realized that it was because he had helped his Life move about and suck in the mana that was flowing into his body for his racial advancement.
Good to know. I should have tried harder. He shuddered at the very idea but didn't contradict himself. I've got to figure out some other way to improve my Life Force it seems.
All that he had left was to advance his class. He'd already made his choice, so he stated it aloud to cement the specialization. "Specialize Class, Life-Aspected Great-Bladesman."
Class Specializing
Complete.
Alex pulled up his sheet immediately for review, but before he went through it all, he realized that he still had 5 unallocated stat points.
He was feeling short on MP of late, but he had three stats that would get ten percent more out of each point…
He was still feeling out of it, so he put one point into each of the boosted stats: Physical Agility and Fortitude along with Mental Agility. He then put the remaining two points into Magical Power to increase his MP maximum.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Then, he reviewed his entire sheet.
Character Sheet:
Alex Johnson
Life-Aspected Human (Rare), E, Level 5
Class: Life-Aspected Great-Bladesman (Epic), E, Level 5
Class 2: NA
HP: 2,417/2,417 [2,596]
SP: 1578/1998
MP: 56/880
Titles:
Reactive Resilience
Physical Stats:
Power: 39
Agility: 64.9
Fortitude: 64.9
Mental Stats:
Power: 32
Agility: 64.9
Fortitude: 35
Magical Stats:
Power: 44
Agility: 35
Fortitude: 40
Unused Points: 0
Attributes:
Blood:
Life Finds a Way (Unique)
General Skills:
Great-Blades Initiate - Dadao (Common)
Advanced Kinesthetics (Common)
Inventory (Common)
Team Sense, Temp
Analyze (Common)
Danger Sense (Common)
Basic Mana Sense (Common)
Basic Mana Manipulation (Common)
Basic Carving (Simple)
Speed Reading (Common)
Spells:
Force Burst (Uncommon)
Create Rations (Common)
Create Water (Common)
Detect Life (Uncommon)
Detect Unlife (Common)
Basic Small Force Blade (Common)
Class Skills and Spells:
Life's Active Defense (Uncommon)
Multi-Strike (Common)
Basic Life Transfusion (Uncommon)
Class Bonuses:
All Life related Spells and Skills cost 50% less to use.
Your Life related Spells' and Skills' effects occur 50% faster.
Your HP is calculated at Racial Base + 15 x Physical Fortitude.
Your MP is calculated at 20 x Magical Power.
Your effective Physical Power is 40% greater for physical attack and defense when you are armed with a great-blade and unrestrained.
You take 25% less damage from Physical attacks when you are armed and unrestrained.
All told, he was quite pleased with himself and his advancement. He seemingly had to increase his Life… somehow.
Absorbing mana from the System seemed to have worked to some extent, but not only had that led to a quite unpleasant experience, he wasn't expecting to have another racial advancement until at least level twenty five if he remembered correctly. Maybe it was fifty?
Yeah, it might have been level fifty where he would advance to a D race… No… wasn't it one hundred?
He sighed, pulling out his book On the Improvement of Races and Rarity.
A 'D' level race was achieved at level one hundred.
In fact, most people within the System never had an F level race at all. E was System-standard.
So, level 5 was just when we were determined to be robust enough to survive the change to E… That was good to know.
Regardless, it was good to know that he shouldn't count on that to fulfill the quest. Waiting ninety-five levels to do this upgrade would leave a lot of potential on the table.
He flipped back through the book. His speed reading had given him a good understanding, but it was still a lot of information to process.
I might need more mental fortitude. From the description of the stats, I think that's the stat that will increase the integrity of my memory. Oh! There it is.
At level twenty five, most established races would consider him a young adult and trust him to go about on his own when on E ranked worlds where the System was established. Level fifty was when he'd be considered an adult fully, and no one would question him going anywhere on an E Ranked world, even if it wouldn't be advisable.
That's why I had those numbers in my head… He grimaced. That meant that he was technically weaker than System-born teenagers, at least on E ranked worlds. He supposed that this scenario was on an F ranked world? He hadn't seen any reference to such in the books… Maybe worlds like this didn't actually exist in reality?
Regardless, it wasn't important. The takeaway was that he was weaker than the average teen under the System.
Lovely. It also meant that they would all be weaker than someone who had had an E rarity Class and Race from level 1.
As if on cue, a System Notice popped up before him.
Notice:
Due to your F ranked initiation, you are behind the curve of System-born beings.
Creating an inferior caste is not the purpose of the System.
Rewards:
Title: System Initiate - All stats + 10%
Stats: Rare Race = 20 unused Points
Alex hesitated. Twenty unused points was massive, but it also wasn't the two hundred points that he would have had by being an E grade since level 1.
Still, the ten percent to all stats should be more valuable in the end… right? He frowned, then realized that the ten percent also applied to stats gained from his classes. It simply applied to all stats he had or would ever gain.
That was massive.
…No, that's broken.
Yes, he would trade a hundred and eighty stat points for a persistent, ten percent increase going forward. It would only take him just more than ten levels in his class and race before he got those missing stats back as bonus. Everything beyond that would be extra.
Assuming I survive until level twenty five. Though, that looked more likely than ever.
Regardless, he now had enough MP to get the remainder of his life force back. He placed his hand on Grant's chest and activated Basic Life Transfusion, commanding his Life to come back.
With that done, he looked at this HP and MP.
Alex Johnson
HP: 2,832/2,832
MP: 99/968
He wasn't quite as low on MP as he'd feared, and he had all his Life back, so that made him quite happy. If he understood correctly, it would take him just more than five and a half hours to come back to full power.
It was probably worthwhile to get more Magical Agility sooner rather than later.
I do have twenty points to spend… He liked more consistent, whole numbers. He laid out one additional point into each Physical stat, four into Mental Power to help with his memory, and one point into each of the other Mental stats. Then, the bulk of his points he put into Magical Power and Agility, placing six and five respectively.
After his new title's bonuses that placed him as follows.
Alex Johnson
HP: 2880/2880
SP: 1808/2232
MP: 231/1100
Physical Stats:
Power: 44
Agility: 72
Fortitude: 72
Mental Stats:
Power: 39.6
Agility: 72
Fortitude: 39.6
Magical Stats:
Power: 55
Agility: 44
Fortitude: 44
That was quite the respectable boost, all things considered, and at this point, he was thoroughly sick of looking at stats and numbers and thinking about all their interactions.
Time to get down to business. He pulled out The Basics of Permanent Magic Symbology, and a broken chair leg that he'd tucked away for the purpose.
Let's see what I can do with Basic Small Force Blade.
There was the immediate question of what to do to the chair leg. He flipped through the book and found a section on 'strengthening' symbology.
The theory seemed to be that the most generic symbol would work on anything, but the more specific the symbol—assuming it was correctly applied—the more powerful the effect for the same cost.
Let's start with the generic strengthening symbol. Then I can test more later.
Apparently, there were modifiers for the age of the item, the exact material, and even the exact thing to be strengthened against. Though, that last one was considered less useful in the general sense, though it was vastly more preferred in things like structural construction, as it allowed for incredibly strong supports, so long as they were hidden behind other defenses.
The end result was both stronger and cheaper to maintain.
But he was getting ahead of himself, and even ahead of this book, given it was just the basics. It referenced these more advanced topics without actually going into them in depth.
Still, it did seem to be an effective primer.
He activated his Basic Small Force Blade at the end of his right pointer finger and felt the small magical drain.
From the feel, it was using less magic than he generated, but it would slow down his recovery.
He only hesitated a moment. It was worth increasing his recovery time a bit in order to train with a new skill.
He repositioned the wood and set to work.
With his increased Physical Agility and the Basic Carving skill to guide him, he didn't see this being too difficult.
An hour later, Alex finally, painstakingly, finished one perfect symbol.
He was on his thirtieth test piece.
As it turned out, his Basic Carving skill mainly told him when he'd messed up, which only helped marginally to improve his work.
He was working on a wooden shingle that had been in one of the closets near the woodshop, one that a teacher had directed him to. He'd long since set the chair leg aside.
Part of the issue was that his Basic Force Blade was just that, an incredibly sharp, almost width-less blade.
It didn't remove material unless he did multiple cuts and that led to a lack of precision. It was like trying to write in a language he didn't know, then do so again, overtop his own writing, offset by an exact amount.
Regardless, he'd finally achieved the result he was hoping for.
Now, for the moment of truth. He placed his hand on the symbol, which resembled very much three spirals joined in the middle into a sort of triangle. They'd had to be perfectly symmetrical, at least according to the book.
As he was about to put magical power into the thing, he decided to recheck the instructions.
He was to use his Basic Mana Manipulation to move…
Alex groaned and spoke out loud. "How the ever-loving pancakes am I supposed to put exactly three mana into this?" He read further. "And I'm supposed to put one mana into each spiral, starting in the middle, at exactly the same rate? What madness is this?"
He grimaced, complained a bit more, then sighed.
"Fine. Let's try this. What's the worst that could happen?"