NeoRealm - Staring back into the Future

As Jason spends the rest of the day moving towards his first few places to check on, he turns his attention to something important to him that had gotten lost in the shuffle. Why had he been able to run for so long and what did he get for it? First stop was of course his character sheet.

{Basic Info

Name: Jason

Level: 15 - 72.35%

Legal Status: Player

Title: Core Genius

Normal Stats

Strength

69 ( 68[Base] + 1[Ascendance] )

★Toughness

60+1 ( 78[Base] + 1[Ascendance] )

★Agility

83+1 ( 91[Base] + 1[Ascendance] )

Control

171 ( 171[Base] )

Auxiliary Stats

Defense

61 ( 60[Energy] + 1[Substance] )

Stamina

112 ( 51[Base] + 60[Energy] + 1[Substance] )

HP

214 ( 153[Base] + 60[Energy] + 1[Substance] )

Energy

30 [+2 stat for every 1]

Tripartite Conceptual Energy

Civilization

0.174%

Ascendance

0.183%

Substance

0.19%

Organizations

Adventurers Guild - Basic Member - Rank D

Odd Ones Out - Team Member - Leader

Bonuses

Knowledge Bonuses:

+2% success rate when using an Energy Herb as an ingredient or growing one

Ability to identify the maturity of a Herb with relevant Identify Skills

+3% malleability to inner self

+5% damage bonus against cats

+5% damage bonus against swarms

Swing bonus of 1% for every .1% in [Civilization]

+2% success rate when guiding Gloom Weed roots

+2% success rate when using a World Herb as an ingredient or growing one

Discovery Bonuses:

+2% success rate when using an Energy Herb or growing one

Able to get a feeling for the maturity of a Herb without a skill

Control of Experience intake

Increased chance to learn power manipulation skills

+2% success rate when using a World Herb or growing one

Bottleneck Bonuses:

Roaming Loam - The material you grow plants in will absorb nature based energies from the land as you travel

Titles:

Willful Survivor - Increased ability to affect the System through your Will

Core Genius - Provides feedback on how suitable your current location is for your cultivation technique and hints on how to improve it

Body Cultivator of Pure Energy - Formed from the titles "Pure Being", "Body Cultivator", and "Energy Controller"

Energy Cycle Genius - Gives warning when Energy draw could destabilize the cycle

Combat Monk - Increase gains from mediation while fighting

Energy Specialist - Increased ability to manipulate one's own Energy

Immortal's Prodigy - Your senses are more attuned to the difference between mortal and primordial powers

Stealthy Assassin - Increased chance of a killshot against enemies that is unaware of you and not on alert

Endless Runner - Stamina has increased effect when running on System recognized roads

Skills

Energetic Body Reinforcement

Accepting only purity of body and mind you have given up past concepts of self for the uncertainty of truth.

Apprentice Level 9 - 99.99%

Rarity: Truth

Type: Passive, Cultivation

Effects:

Filtering Cycle - Gain only 10% of absorbed energies but they are extremely pure

Purity of energy - Because of the purity of your energy higher levels have a lower scaling on what is needed to level up and the energy does more

Self Contained - Growth comes from within, forsaking outside bonuses in exchange for personal control. Stat bonuses from Equipment negated up to total Energy times 2.

Self Sustained - Your Energy can sustain you

Energized Flesh - Can hit incorporeal things for 66% of normal damage with body

Material Body (Wood) - With time your body can become like living metal or hard like a diamond

Untainted Core - No longer is your body that of a normal mortal as your heart has stopped but you haven't. Your body doesn't attempt to mimic internals so status effects like broken bones heal twice as fast because you don't have any

Sub-Skill Acquisition (Unique) - Allows one to gain sub-skills

Freeform Energy Movement [Apprentice+] - Allows use of Energy to move

Energetic Poison and Venom Resistance

One of the rare active skill based resistances. While still able to passively provide benefits, this skill really shines when directly used. Beyond that, the skill has been changed to treat all venom and poison the same. So while the nuance has been lost and percentages harder to increase, this variant has become more suited for its current user.

Apprentice Level 1 - 0.00%

Rarity: Variant

Type: Passive/Active, Energy, Adaptive

Effects:

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Willful Purge - Able to send charges of Energy through the body to break down poison and venom in the body

Mundane Poison & Venom Resistances -

Trash rank - Immunity

Low Normal rank - 11%

Normal rank - 7%

Body Blast

What started as just a variant of Blast Punch meant for Energy Users has evolved into something much less restricted. The biggest feature of this new skill is the ability to any part of the body as a weapon to project the blast from. Not much else is known about the skill yet as the creator is still shaping it.

Apprentice Level 3 - 55.79%

Rarity: Variant Beginner

Type: Energy Attack

Effects:

Frugal - This attack only uses energy on a successful hit

Pure Force - Not affected by most types of resistance

Armor Piercing - As the attack partially forms inside the enemy some damage will ignore armor. At the current level this distance is short and so will not pierce equipment or exceptionally thick natural armor.

Herb Farming

You have shown yourself to be proficient at this classic skill. Don't look down on it as these lands contain many mysterious plants with uncountable effects. Though you seem to have already taken a step towards understanding this.

Apprentice Level 8 - 29.50%

Rarity: Uncommon

Type: Passive, Production

Effects:

Sub-Skill Acquisition (Farming) - Allows one to gain the sub-skills related to farming

Harvest [Apprentice+]

Analysis (Plant) [Apprentice+]

Distillation [Initiate]

Analysis (Farming) [Initiate]

Land Sense - Grants a sense for the condition of any area you could grow your plants

Growth Assist - Plants under your constant care grow up to 10% faster

Specialty (Herb) - Having gained the skill through exclusively growing one type of plant, all effects of the Farming skill and Bonuses are doubled for it

Harvesting Common Sense - With the knowledge of all basic harvesting methods you will be prompted with the best way to harvest plant that you know of and slightly increase the success rate of harvesting

War Stomp

A classic powered kick attack. Despite the tendency for it to be used with Qi the skill can be powered with any type of resource pool. The different power sources will cause different effects to happen and so the possibilities of this skill are technically unlimited.

Initiate Level 9 - 60.33%

Rarity: Common

Type: Primal Energy Attack

Effects:

Primal Simplicity - Through uncountable iterations the creator of this skill has reduced it to the most simple form which allows for an impressive speed of use

Inheritance - This version of the skill was personally learned from the creator and there is a possibility of others being able to recognize this, however the skill is easier to advance because of the more in depth teaching you recieved

Potential - The creator of this skill does not believe in perfection and so it will grow with the user, more so than other skills

Otherworldly - The first of the main runes of this skill is based off of knowledge and shapes from outside of NeoRealm which makes deciphering the skill harder with System skills

Banked Spiral - The second of the main runes of this skill is a simple spiral and this simplicity allows it to direct the power more efficiently than others would expect and the skill needs less power as a result

Core Sensibility - The third and final of the main runes of this skill is the users own core rune which provides a very personal touch and means the attack will never harm the user no matter the size or power of it

Free Form - Because of an in depth knowledge of formless martial arts the skill can now be freely used instead of just with a stomp attack

Clad - For double the expenditure and an upkeep cost this skill can become a continuous effect

Variable Attack -

Never Ending Threads - When the skill is used with Energy the attack will shatter into thousands of threads which will continue to shred the target until an opposing power wears it down

Runic Bloom - When the skill is used with Stamina a flower bud rune will bloom outward causing the razor sharp petals to slice through the target and when finished the bloom will rapidly wilt and any wounds in contact with it will become harder to heal}

The first thing that stood out to him was the fact he had starred Agility. Which, to be fair, was probably inevitable with how much he ran. That and the general increase in most of his stats including Control, some by impressive amounts, was almost a given. Epic feats do tend to get rewarded by the System, unlike how reality normally does things.

Besides that, he also gained a level. In fact, he almost got a second level up. That wasn't going to allow him to run for three days though so he continues looking his status over. Then, as he looks closer, he finds that even one of his concepts improved and not by a small amount.

[Civilization] went up by 0.013%. Compared to the effort he put into understanding them in the past this was amazing. Though Jason knew the reason. His run had been all about providing support to a civilization. The idea of personal responsibility as one of a greater whole even if one isn't necessarily a direct part of that greater whole.

Still, while the increases in his stats were important, they wouldn't explain his being able to run for three days straight. A bit further down the panel, of course, are his titles and there was no way he wasn't getting one of those for the run. Though calling it "Endless Runner" is a bit on the nose.

That wouldn't explain it either because you gain the title after the event. It would be silly to gain a title for defending a fort in the middle of defending the fort. Not only would this leave open the possibility that the fort ends up being lost, but also the sudden boost in power would be "unfair" to the other side. So sure, having his Stamina being more effective on roads will help the next time he has to do something like that, it didn't help this time.

It was in the skills that Jason finally figured it out. His cultivation skill had improved by twenty to thirty percent towards the next level and there was a new effect. That new effect was the most likely suspect, with even the name "Self Sustained" pointing towards its use. Beyond that, the System didn't even waste too many words on the description, simply stating "Your Energy can sustain you".

Jason, of course, knew of similar sort of abilities, seeing as most cultivators tried for a similar state. It basically meant that if he didn't want to, he might not have to eat, drink, or even breathe. In theory. Big caveats are all over the place as it tends to take a while to fully sustain yourself off of just some mystical power or another.

In fact, now that the System has recognized it as an effect of his cultivation, he likely won't be able to quite replicate his three-day run for a while. Not that he would have wanted to replicate it anyway. If you do something like that once, you might be able to get away without any complications. Trying to do a repeat however has a tendency to cause problems as things that got broken the first time haven't healed and so break even further. Things which might have recovered with time would suddenly be permanently busted.

Mystery solved, Jason turns his attention to the road ahead of him. It had been peaceful enough, not that he had expected anything this close to the city. He doesn't expect to find anything cult related until maybe the second day. Right now, all he had to worry about was alerting any people he came across and watching for the usual monster attacks.

It would have honestly been almost a relief to have a monster attack him. As it is though, the rest of the day passes quietly. Jason, of course, is paranoid about this turn of events. Sure, it is still close to the city, but there should have been some kind of monsters lurking about, even if it didn't attack him.

There however isn't anything he can do about his worries and so can only continue on his way. Though he does turn in early that night. Not because he reached some sort of stopping point. Rather, he had something to begin learning and maybe, hopefully, implement.

So from his backpack Jason brings out his new manual with how to set up a small scale alarm ritual. At the most basic level, it was simple enough. Scratch some lines in the ground and flood it with Energy. As long as he gets the lines close enough, it would work. That is, until something scuffs one of those lines, it rains, or maybe the wind blows a little aggressively.

For tonight, though, he was going to have to go with the most basic version with exactly those and many other weaknesses. At least it worked and the grass field he was camping in was less likely to have the ground shift around. Of course, the grass itself posed a problem of its own. In the end, it took a little bit of ingenuity on his part as he lacked the usual tools for such things.

So with an Energy charged pinky, Jason tediously carved out a relatively simple rune. Simple if you had a proper hooked piece of metal meant to cut out a thin channel of turf. Using a finger runs into a few problems. At least he doesn't have to worry about hiding the rune structure the following morning. The tool would have allowed him to keep the cut out pieces together and then replace them the next day.

Instead, Jason would just let the runework decay naturally. After all, random bits of dirt and grass aren't exactly able to hold the Energy that would be flowing through it. While the basic outline of the rune would remain, any actual detail would soon be lost.