NOVEL NEXT Chapter 4, Part 1 - Optimizing Your Isekai
My first set of questions were about the dangers I'd face, both inside rifts and dungeons and not.
Liene liked to monologue a bit and was clearly enjoying teaching mode. She was making a number of points by either stabbing her skewers or throwing them about the room.
"Well, let's start with the things you have far more control over – rifts and dungeons. There can always be a surprise break but overall, it's mostly about which ones you choose to enter. What was your affinity again? I can help recommend where to go and maybe get you some discounts on delve slots," Liene said, leaning impossibly far back in her chair.
I wondered if there was an enchantment on the chair, she had a skill or spell, or she was just that good. My guess was enchanted chair since she chose a very specific one.
"I don't think I mentioned; I am null affinity," I said casually but to a series of dark looks and even a hand-clenched-to-the-chest gasp from the brawler. He looked truly horrified.
"<redacted> kid, that is utter horse <redacted>. I guess at least the <redacted>-up situation to the east means you aren't totally <redacted> in the <redacted> but… Wait, that could actually be good. Last time a place got messed up almost this bad, the rifts and dungeons stayed mostly the same but NO ONE wanted to go in there, even if it was only about 10% as strong as this one seems to be."
She shook her head in an exaggerated fashion. "It sucks big dragon <redacted> to absorb null essence. Feels like you are getting your guts ripped up. And not… yeah, anyways." She looked towards the knight for a second before snapping back to me.
"You'll have your pick and might even get those stodgy <redacted> at the Adventurers Guild to give you contracts to clear them. Heh, that actually could be lucky, at least for a few years before the green essence zone presumably comes back!" There was a gleam in her eye at that. I wasn't sure if it was because of the opportunity in general or specifically about getting one over on the Adventurers Guild.
"Eh… he can't get involved with the Adventurers Guild. Because of his… prior circumstances…" Stannis seemed to be choosing his words carefully but made a few gestures at me and then almost a wiggling hips motion from his chair.
I finally had to say something. "Okay, I want to get back to the rifts discussion but what can you tell me about this Cornelius thing? It seems like it will follow me no matter what. And I think Stannis is being prevented from actually saying something." He visibly winced, though this time it didn't seem to be from getting hurt. "I think it would be helpful to us both if you explained." I tried to keep my voice calm and steady but I was too intrigued.
Generally, I did my best not to get involved in office gossip for many reasons – rule 194 – but this seemed juicy and it truly seemed like it would haunt me. Possibly to my literal grave. Best to get ahead of it.
Before Liene could respond, Stannis let out a gasp of pain. "That is classified and I can't be involved in letting the information get out. And nope, I can't try to do something mildly clever like leave the room. Now that I know it might be discussed, I can't allow it." After a brief pause, he looked to me and simply added, "I'm sorry."
Disappointed didn't really describe how I felt. Resigned was probably the best way. I couldn't fault Stannis, just someone higher up the chain that screwed me over.
There were ways to likely get enough details but they might result in pretty bad repercussions for Stannis if anyone discovered it. Weighing the need to know versus Stannis' safety and maybe life – if they were shocking him just for skirting around the info, it might really be truly classified in an 'I could tell you but I'd have to kill you and then a bunch of other people' kind of way – I decided to let it go.
Plus someone might get pissed off if I learn about it and then come squish me. Yes, let's leave that for now.
The warrior, a woman sporting a greatsword and some truly impressive muscles – damn, nice forearms! Wait, is that something I'm into now? Ugh, stupid 18 year old body – stepped forward and put a hand on Liene's shoulder. "I would be remiss if I didn't ensure the soundness of your understanding of the intricacies of cultivation. I had the unfortunate pleasure of a run-in related to your… body double… and I came to understand he – or at least his soul and consciousness – came here through no machinations of his own from a world, nay a realm, that lacked cultivation. Is your situation equivalent?"
At my nod, she continued. "And the cultivation pyramid has been explained, that building from the zeroth sub-Tier to the first will take considerably less essence than from the eighth to the ninth?" At my affirmative nod, she gave a grateful nod to Stannis. "And then surely, your Innate Capability and the Evens and Odds were covered too. That's obviously important for your build."
Stannis gave a nervous – or embarrassed – cough and I added, "We didn't have time to cover that and unfortunately, my Core Ignition did not include the disclosure of my Innate Capability, only that it wasn't dangerous to the Kingdom. It would have been 50 gold for that information, only the ignition was free."
The entire group looked shocked initially and their faces quickly morphed into a range from disgusted to mutinous.
"I think I heard her say 'lucky little' something, maybe sodas?" Chuckles erupted from everyone. "Let's keep it to one question: if I didn't know my 'Cap', how would you treat that?"
"Well, you'll be able to get a reading pretty cheaply, even here in town," Liene started but cut off at a shake of the head from Stannis. "<redacted> kid, you really are getting the <redacted>-end of the stick. Weird phrase, who is putting <redacted> on a stick? No Luka, I don't need an explanation right now."
I'm pretty sure 'sodus' is pretty equivalent to shit and 'jebbie' is probably the f-word.
"Okay, do you know how you want to fight? We can't take your Cap into account right now. If you are null, that probably means solo delving unfortunately. You could armor up like crazy but I doubt the funds they gave you will let you actually get good enough sodus to protect your cute <redacted> from too many hits. Or if you get knocked over."
There were multiple shudders, including from Stannis.
"Have seen too many get turtled by overwhelming numbers and if you don't have anyone to step in to get you off your back, you're jebbie'd. Hopefully not literally!" She looked for a laugh that didn't come before sombering. "Being slowly bitten or scratched to death and your only remaining hope is that it's relatively quick is a real jebbie'd way to go…"
I felt sick to my stomach but apparently wasn't the only one. The brawler and ranged attacker both looked off into the distance.
"I want to focus more on control, dexterity and dodging, and whittling opponents down. I have tried to just use overwhelming force in video games—" At seeing their looks of utter confusion, I tried a different wording.
Consultant survival tip #9: Always read the room. It is very easy to lose people, especially when using jargon they might not know, and many stay lost rather than catching up to the conversation with just a bit of context missing. And few will actually admit they are lost and ask for clarification. Overexplain more than underexplain. It can frustrate some but better they are overinformed than under.
"—these are simulations of things like battle that we have for entertainment. And gaining knowledge." Not the best explanation but one that fits with what's available for purchase to use with tablets and AAIs.
With everyone back to being on board, I said, "I have used strategies of simply overwhelming force and it ended… badly. With my… the person I was using in the simulation dying quickly. So I want to focus more on control but I also don't think a ranged attacker is good only on their own – no offense… sorry, I didn't get your name." The ranged attacker just shrugged.
Liene laughed, setting her hat in motion again. "Dragoslav is somewhat of a specialist in stealth and thus likes to remain silent. Except when losing at cards. That said, it's almost impossible to offend him. Unless you talk about that god-awful book series he is always going on about. The Amazing Adventures of something or other.
"Back to the point: you want to focus on battle control. That means you probably want defense and offense with a bit of range so probably shield plus spear or a moderate length sword. Halberd would fit the bill if you were strong enough to wield it one handed but I don't think that is the case right now. Mostly that's someone who has a few Tiers and has focused almost exclusively on strength. And you'd need a great trainer which you won't find out in the boonies.
"Yes, I would probably recommend sword or spear. Despite your height, swords open up a lot more arenas in the future with two handed, thrusting, etc. They are best when delving though not quite as good against people because everyone trains against them. Anyone disagree?"
Sword and board it is I guess. Maybe I can put a cool sigil or coat of arms on the shield? Do I want to differentiate myself much? I guess I'll see if the general vibe is towards supporting the standouts or if the tall blade of grass gets cut.
After spending the next 15 minutes deciding which spear or sword type would work best – I'd been in favor of a sword that looked like what I thought was a khopesh but I was never too much of a swords guy – we actually ended up on a long shaft morningstar instead. It would inflict some piercing wounds, allow me to more easily damage or cripple monster limbs, help me move enemies around through strength-based blows, take advantage of my height, etc. I could cultivate more to strength and dexterity early instead of getting overly complex.
Plus, they were pretty cheap so I could continually upgrade to ones with enchantments and/or made of better materials. Though I'd probably need to commission them as they weren't that common.
I didn't think I'd look as cool but it really did fit the wear-them-down-while-staying-safe style of fighting I was hoping for. Plus, most who wielded the spiked mace didn't develop bad habits for switching to other weapons, which was something Luka – the assassin type – was happy to report. He was all about maintaining flexibility to take the best path forwards.
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The warrior, who'd been heavily team sword, was looking slightly grumpy but stepped forward again. I eventually learned her name was Axe. It used to be Alexandra but she shortened it to Axe. She said it gave her a minor advantage through confusion in battle: when people heard someone shouting commands for Axe, they looked for an axe. And that was her moment to strike.
"Guildmistress Liene, I know we deigned to focus on weapons and still must cover armor but I believe it is imperative to at least broach Evens and Odds forthwith. If he leaves without said knowledge, it could significantly impede his path."
"Yes, yes Axe, we know how much you love talking about the intricacies. Go ahead." Liene grabbed another skewer and, despite the sauce having congealed on it in multiple spots, looking like greasy pupae to the mystery meat, she seemed to enjoy it as much as any other she'd eaten. Apparently the six extra helpings were all for her.
"Coinciding with your Core Ignition and subsequent rise to Tier 1, you gain an initial Innate Capability. Or 'Cap' as some cretins call it." She threw a glance around and all of her fellow guild members rolled their eyes simultaneously, like it was choreographed.
"As this was seemingly not explained to you, I may have words for Stannis after. However, depending on how you allocate your essence and your cultivation focus, you will gain additional Innate Capabilities and strengthen them. I have consumed a large corpus of research on this topic and find it fascinating."
Just as she was getting up a head of steam, Liene said, "Time limit girl. Flirt with the nerd sodus later."
Blushing deeply, Axe bowed her head before continuing, talking to the table. "All cultivators are either Evens or Odds. If you are an Even, every time you advance in Tier, or 'Tier Up', on even Tiers, your initial Innate Capability increases, often significantly, in efficacy. On odd Tiers, Evens get additional small boons to their initial Innate Capability. Most cultivators are Evens. It is challenging to get exact numbers as most people are not amenable to divulge such information, but estimates are around 92.3%.
"Odds are obviously quite uncommon. Every even Tier, an Odd will receive an increase to one of their Innate Capabilities. That increase is usually paltry but can occasionally be quite substantial. I said 'one of' because every odd Tier, Odds receive an additional full Innate Capability. Typically, it is closely aligned with the initial Innate Capability but it can be rather random. At the even Tier, an Odd ordinarily sees their most recent Innate Capability increase in strength.
"Then, everything becomes more fascinating, yet sadly more muddled, when you start to allocate essence to your Innate Capability core."
I bet I'm an Odd. Gotta have some super-secret set of special power, right? If only…
We discussed cores for another ten minutes and I was starting to get worried about the time but cores were actually more important than armor when I started learning more.
Everyone had four cores: physical, magical, innate capability, and bloodline.
Bloodline was the easiest; a few people and all magical beasts – a topic I wanted to delve deeply into but we couldn't right then – had a bloodline. Those bloodlines gave people powers, such as a Green Iguana with strong regenerative powers that meant a lost limb could be regrown almost instantaneously.
It's possible for someone to allocate up to 10% of their essence in any Tier to their bloodline core. If someone didn't have a current bloodline, they could awaken one – through magical intervention, not spontaneously unfortunately – but the higher the Tier of the person when it happens, the less effective it will be. Post Tier 5, there were no records, at least on Putijama, about someone awakening a bloodline.
Similar to the bloodline core, it's possible to allocate up to 10% of essence in any Tier to the Innate Capability core, or CapCore as Liene called it, further strengthening existing innate capabilities. With Evens, it's pretty straightforward. But with Odds, things can get more complex. Most people can choose which Innate Capability to allocate to but it's not 100%. We didn't get deep into the intricacies but Axe excitedly winked at me – in a very friendly only way – and mouthed something that I couldn't understand through the translation spell.
Most people allocated nothing to the bloodline core and little to no essence to the CapCore.
Magical and physical cores were pretty much what I was expecting. For the magical core, it was about directing essence towards mana regeneration, mana capacity, or the more nebulous mana affinity. Most people had multiple affinities but one main one; if they wanted to increase their affinity to orange essence, they would allocate more to that. However, it only worked on their spells, not how they absorbed essence.
I really was still a bit lost there but time was of the essence. Pun not intended.
The physical core was a lot of the typical categories of endurance, regeneration, strength, dexterity, processing, memory, proprioception, etc. People could get really specific too, like increasing hand dexterity. Luka had that in spades and Dragoslav did too. Axe gave me a good breakdown of where I should focus past Tier 1 with just the advice of 'equal distribution to everything' in Tier 1 depending on how much I put into my physical and magic cores.
They recommended 70/30 physical and magical but I was thinking closer to 60/40 or maybe even 50/50. The dream of being a mage is too cool!
Unfortunately, they informed me mana isn't typically useful until you get spells and skills but most wanted to build out their pool a bit in advance.
Liene cut off a discussion about allocation strategy and quickly brought us around to armor. "With what you're going for, I would normally recommend full plate. Unfortunately you don't have the budget for anything more than basically paper plate, HA!" No one else laughed at the lame joke. "Okay, first off, boo to all of you. Cleaning duty to everyone. Second, I think full plate is too dangerous for a solo delver for what we talked about earlier. Luka, Axe, if you were balancing movement and resilience with a shield, what would you go for?"
"Chain shirt and probably leg plates or studded leather pants. Oh man, he would look great in leather pants, wouldn't he?" Luka said, looking to Liene.
"Frankly, I concur with Luka," Axe added quickly.
"About the armor or the leather pants?" Liene chided. Axe blushed a deep crimson and mumbled to herself.
Consultant survival tip #74: Never, ever, EVER make fun of your subordinates in a full meeting, no matter what relationship everyone has to each other. Going for the joke can come at the expense of their trust. The cost of a few laughs is their trust and respect. It's not worth it.
"Stannis, I think you can help him pick out the armor, no? Armor is obviously crucial but really, there are few really bad directions you can go and with your budget, most of it is pretty much the same. So, any remaining questions? You booked us for an hour."
I excitedly leaned forward, now that all the melee talk was done. Yes it was crucial. And honestly fascinating. But SPELLS!
"Everyone keeps telling me I shouldn't get spells or skills yet but I don't know why. Stannis won't say but I don't think it's classified, he's not getting shocked. So why shouldn't I get a spell – if I can afford it – at my current sub-Tier?"
I tried to keep my voice steady. If it was bad for me now, I would have the patience to not ruin my cultivation; or my pocketbook.
But man did I want to shoot lightning and fly and do it all.
Even just that sound attack that pushed people a bit would be cool.
Focusing back on the rest of the room from my daydream, I really looked around. Everyone was giving me slightly pained looks. "What? Did I say something offensive?"
I couldn't understand any of what they said in reply.
Well, sodus.
***
SO. MUCH. PAIN.
While the Core Ignition was simultaneously good and bad – like that time I'd hooked up with my ex – the AAI implantation was no mixed bag.
It was only awful.
Really, really awful.
On Earth, they always said you couldn't feel brain surgery. And it makes sense, why would there be nerve endings in your brain?
But I could feel the chip moving through my brain, every millimeter it wiggled and wriggled slowly through my gray matter felt like a poke in the belly button but for my whole body – a weird mix of nausea, pain, and something adjacent to pleasure that was somehow awful. I thought they might implant it at the base of my skull but nope. Seemingly dead center of my jebbie-ing brain. It took forever; we had already been there for almost 45 minutes.
And my burgeoning connection to the damn thing made me even more aware of it and everything around me.
At least I could actually finally understand what everyone was saying. The AAI chip, as I learned from Stannis in our down moments, was a mix of technology and magic. It could communicate directly via my brainwaves. And it took in soundwaves and changed the words to concepts I could understand if it was loaded with the software for that language.
Awesome for communicating with those I could connect with but far less useful for those I couldn't as it wouldn't change my own words and their chips presumably wouldn't understand English.
Stannis was apparently barred from connecting with me so while I could understand him, he couldn't me. The technician was translating until I said, "Hi, yes, I appreciate you translating but I'd rather you focus on not destroying my brain. I like this brain. Well, I've only had it for a bit but I like it so far."
Stop trying to tell jokes to the person holding instruments inside your brain. At least it didn't land.
Imagine the tombstone:
Here lies Terry.
He told a joke so good it killed.
Him, unfortunately.
"Oh, I retracted the tools and the chip itself is finding the right spot with the aid of its magic and that of the facility. All good here, I'm just keeping your skull open because it is so cool seeing it work," the man said with a nonchalance I envied. He said it like that was a normal thing to do to another person, watch as something wriggled through their brain just for the fun of it.
Not knowing how to react, I sat there in a confused silence for a good two minutes before he began touching a tool to the bones that were peeled away at the top of my skull. They made sloppy squelching sounds as I felt them reseal. I was simply glad I was restrained because my almighty shudder might have caused damage.
Maybe it made my hair better? Couldn't have made it worse…
Suddenly, I was free from the bindings. I looked to the man who just languidly stared back at me.
"Uh, can I go now?" I asked. He just made a shooing motion and took out a tablet and started watching something. I turned to Stannis who handed me my tablet and walked me through connecting it to my AAI. Thankfully, it was locked to my AAI so no one could steal the tablet and get the information on it.
Personal information security is probably going to be even more important here since personal power is driven by the actual power of my person. I need to keep info about me secret. If only Middy could see me this worried about OpSec.
I brought up the free translation program Alena pointed me to and started talking. Stannis smiled as the program started spitting letters out on the screen. The program could speak out loud – called A Dragon Speaking Naturally – was ungodly expensive.
"I'll never learn magic it seems." Stannis merely laughed and shrugged. "Shall we go see about getting me some armor, a morningstar, some supplies, and hopefully a spatial item?"
Stannis nodded and swung his arm, turning towards the door. "You know I can understand you, it's just you that can't understand me, right?" I said.
Stannis turned around and looked at the tablet and laughed again. "Totally forgot that. Glad we had a plan for when the magic would fizzle. Liene was very concerned you were screwed. Damn budget allocation only giving us <two hours>… I was trying to keep you calm on the way here for a good five minutes until I realized, first that you were calm as could be despite not understanding anything, second I was the one that was a bit frazzled, and third you couldn't even understand the beautiful, calming words. Unfortunately, Liene's team has a delve scheduled for tomorrow and left just after we did so you can't connect to them just yet or finish your session."
I visibly rolled my eyes and he laughed again. He seemed in a much better mood suddenly. I knew he exchanged a few words with the members of Liene's guild before we left but I wasn't sure if that was the cause. Holding the tablet in front of my face, I said, "Okay, let's head back to that shop Alena recommended?"
I heard Stannis move and brought the tablet down. He looked sheepish and nodded. I presumed it was for the second time.
"Just lead the way and feel free to talk freely at me about the city, its culture, the Guard, etc. as we walk there. I'd rather hurry a bit because I know you can't really tell me much beyond what you have already about cultivation and I want to try to get to the town – Velez – before the sun sets if I'm really not allowed to stay here even a single night." I kept the tablet just to the side of my face this time and Stannis seemed better at-ease with that.
"Sounds great, let's go kid."