Erani helped me through the forest for about an hour before we had to take a break. I was burned, battered, burdened by notification sickness, and couldn’t walk on my own. Erani was in no shape to support my entire weight for that long, either.
Once we were a good distance away and sure we hadn’t been followed, we sat down. The moment I was no longer wrapped around Erani’s shoulder, she collapsed on the ground. I didn’t realize just how exhausted she obviously was, and felt bad for burdening her so much. But I was just as tired, so I lay on the dirt, rubbing my eyes in an unsuccessful attempt to remedy my headache. It reminded me of that stress I used to feel from my rigorous practice with Noxious Grasp – back when I’d first been lost in the woods.
The Dryad seemed to understand that we were taking a break, and sat down next to us. She closed her eyes, seeming to meditate in a similar way Erani or I would in order to manage our Level-ups. It was strange – I’d never seen her do that before.
But now wasn’t the time to ponder what our monster ally was doing. I had Level-ups of my own to manage, and I was excited to see what I got. First, I opened up my Status.
Name:
Arlan Nota
Age:
20
Strength:
16Class:
Minute Mage
Level:
14
Endurance:
31
Class Type:
Magic
XP:
341/1k
Dexterity:
15
Health:
24/310
Health/Minute:
0.1122
Conjuration:
74
Stamina:
93/139
Stamina/Minute:
0.93
Intelligence:
18
Mana:
830/830
Mana/Minute:
16.02
Stat Points:
9
Spells:
Talents:
Titles:
[Spell Choice Available]
Regenerate
Devastator
Gravity Well 6 - XP 4/66
Recursive Growth
Trailblazer
Ray of Frost 6 - XP 11/66
Time Loop 14
+Extended Loop
Crippling Chill 9 - XP 101/355
Noxious Grasp 10 - XP 98/461
+Venomous Grasp
Just about everything had increased – and by a lot. My Mana/Minute was at 16, making it quicker than ever to get Spell XP. My Health/Minute had finally surpassed 0.1, so I was officially gaining a point of Health every ten minutes – still incredibly slow, but much better than before. My Stamina/Minute was approaching 1, which would make my Regenerate Talent much more efficient. And, of course, my maximum Health, Stamina, and Mana had all increased by quite a bit, too. That milestone of 1000 Mana was approaching more quickly than ever.
In addition to all that, my Intelligence had also passed 16. I’d noticed that my Intelligence Information Ranks increased at every 4 points of Intelligence, so I must’ve gotten something and missed it in the flood of other notifications.
Intelligence threshold reached. 16 Intelligence.
Your Intelligence information rank has increased.
Due to increasing your Intelligence information rank, you have been granted the following benefits:
-Trailblazer Title has begun collecting data on holder. All future thoughts, decisions, actions, emotions, and movements will be logged.
-Logged data will be used as Intelligence Information Rank increases further.
I read through this notification once, then again.
…What?
It definitely wasn’t the same as the other Intelligence Information Ranks I’d gotten in the past. Those all had a definitive, noticeable effect, telling me what I may be offered in the future depending on my choices. But this…
What did it mean by ‘collecting data’? Thoughts, decisions, actions – how would it keep track of them? Could I see the log it was keeping?
I tried to coerce the System to pull open this ‘log’ of my thoughts, but couldn’t. Seemed like that wasn’t for my eyes. But would it really include everything? I knew the System had access to my mind – how else would I be controlling it – but it felt a bit intrusive for it to so explicitly say it could read my thoughts.
And what was it even doing with them? Presumably, for now, it was just keeping track. But it said that in the future, the data would be ‘used’. Used how? How could it even help me by knowing what I thought? I also knew what I was thinking. It wasn’t like it could give me any extra info in that regard. I was incredibly intrigued to see what may happen with this Title in the future.
For now, it effectively did nothing. But I was suddenly extremely conscious of what I thought. What if I felt the wrong emotion and suddenly changed how this ‘log’ thought of me? Was there someone out there reading through this log to determine if I was worthy of some great weapon in the future? Or maybe it was keeping track for some completely different reason.
Either way, I couldn’t really do anything about it, for now. Without any knowledge of how the log would be used, I wasn’t even sure how I could change my behavior to make sure I was being logged in the way I wanted. Did I want to seem kind and righteous? Powerful and ruthless? Or maybe it didn’t matter.
I tried to mentally move on to the realm of Spells, Talents, and Titles. There were a few big improvements. Of course, there was the notable Spell Choice and Devastator Title flashing out at me, but Time Loop ranking up as much as it did was also a big deal.
Previously, it would only take me back by an hour and a half. But now, thanks to Extended Loop, that had doubled – I could go back 3 hours per use. With two uses per day being allotted to me, that meant that, while everyone else lived in twenty-four hour days, I suddenly found myself living through thirty hours before a day had passed.
I suspected my sleep schedule would suffer – even if my body only experienced the regular-length days, my mind didn’t. It already felt strange adding on an extra couple hours, and now that had doubled. I’d just have to get used to it.
But that was a worry for another time. For now, I wanted to get straight to the meat of my gains. First was my Devastator Title. After that weirdness with Trailblazer, part of me was a bit nervous to see what this one did, but I ignored that feeling and looked over its description.
Devastator
You have taken a risk and killed enough enemies that, in a single minute, you have gained three or more Levels. For many, gambles like that cost them their lives. For you, it paid off. Greed is good.
All enemies you contribute to killing provide 25% more XP.
…That was good. Incredibly so. With this Title, the rate I Leveled would be increased an intense amount. And it wasn’t just me. The Title didn’t say that I earned 25% more XP, it said that the monsters I contributed to killing provided 25% more XP to everyone. So, if Erani and I killed a monster together, we’d both earn the extra XP. This Title would help my allies just as much as it helped me.
And help it did. 25% more XP may have been small in the short term, but after some time, it could be equal to an extra Level or two, and only increased more and more as time went on. And, of course, in my situation, every point of XP was incredibly valuable.
I’d never heard of this Title, but that wasn’t surprising, really. There were thousands of documented Titles – enough to fit in entire dictionaries of the things that filled the shelves of libraries – and more were discovered every year. People theorized there were millions of them, some for general achievements, and some for much more specific, niche things.
I was sure that a Title like this had been found before – getting three Levels at once was uncommon, of course, but this probably wasn’t the first ever time something like that had happened. Especially when compared to other Titles that existed. There were things like a Title for learning a Spell of every single Spell School, or one for single-handedly killing one million monsters in your lifetime. Those had been discovered by people who literally dedicated their lives toward accomplishing those goals, just to see if there was a Title for doing it. So I was sure that someone had gotten a few Levels at once before.
But getting the Title was still incredible. An extra 25% XP, forever. I could practically feel the power crackling at my fingertips.
And, speaking of power at my fingertips, I still had a Spell Choice to go through. This was one of the biggest benefits of Leveling, I’d noticed. While learning a new Spell wasn’t technically a strict numerical increase to my power like getting Stats was, the additional options were just as – if not more – important. A single new Spell could mean the difference between a sure victory and a swift defeat.
So, with thoughts of maximizing this new boost in power as much as I could in my mind, I opened my Spell Choice and looked over the options.
Choose one Spell to learn:
Ethereal Armor
School: Arcane, Summoning
Type: Activated
Cost: 150 Mana
—
You summon one of two sets of magical armor – Dark Plate or Light Plate. You may dismiss it at any time. It will be automatically dismissed after 60 minutes.
While wearing Dark Plate, you cannot take more than 50% of your maximum Health in damage in a single second (155 damage). Preventing damage this way breaks the Plate, making it unusable for 60 seconds.
While wearing Light Plate, your other spells cost 10% less, though still gain Spell XP as though they weren’t discounted.
Intelligence information:
If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:
Ember Gale - School: Fire
Expedite - School: Alteration
Heartstone - School: Alteration, Summoning
Abrupt Decay
School: Nature
Type: Activated
Cost: 75 Mana
—
Choose a being you are touching. If it has less than 300 Health, it dies.
Intelligence information:
If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:
Damnation - School: Demonic
Mana Seism - School: Arcane
Contaminated Bond - School: Curse, Nature
Stasis
School: Curse, Arcane
Type: Activated
Cost: 280 Mana
—
Freeze time for a single being that you are touching for 10 seconds. The being cannot move, think, or otherwise perceive the outside world for the duration, and its body cannot be forcibly moved or damaged.
Reduce the duration of this spell by 1 second for each 10 Endurance the entity has. A being with 100 Endurance is completely unaffected.
Intelligence information:
If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:
Chain of Vapor - School: Aqueous,Arcane
Killing Wave - School: Arcane
Luminous Bonds - School: Curse, Divine
I could tell by now that my options were aimed toward higher-Leveled individuals. Between Ethereal Armor and Stasis, these options cost quite a bit. Even Abrupt Decay was up there, at 75 Mana. Compared to my first few Spell Choices, their costs were enormous. Even Gravity Well’s 10 per second was pretty up there. But with their high Mana costs came high power, too.
Ethereal Armor was flexible, essentially allowing me to choose between better survivability against high-damage attacks, or cheaper Spells – provided I was willing to pay its up-front cost of 150 Mana. Abrupt Decay was interesting. It would let me deal 300 damage to anything I was touching for the relatively miniscule cost of 75 Mana, but only if that damage would kill them. Otherwise, it’d do nothing. And Stasis could freeze someone in time for up to 10 seconds – a great effect paired with a suitably great cost.
But, of course, I’d have to choose the best from among them.
I just had no idea which one that was.