The Way Ahead

Level Up!

Skill Points 610→636

Progress to Tier 2: 787/1590

Construction Level 0→15

Harvesting Level 0→6

Purify Level 0→4

“Feel any different?”

“Not… really? Am I supposed to?”

“No.”

Edwin blinked at Inion. Then why… ah, it was either a human thing or a fey thing. Either way, not something worth trying to puzzle out. Honestly, he wasn’t sure which would be harder to actually put together, though he almost suspected it might be humans.

“Okay, but Paths now, right?”

“Ya! Tell me what you got.”

Edwin pulled up his list. It was getting… rather lengthy, but they had time.

Current Plan:

Adventurer 0/30, Warrior 0/60, Athlete 0/60, Researcher 0/60, Skilled Arcanist 0/60, Potioneer 0/60, Wanderer 0/60, Stonehide Vanquisher 0/60, Scientist 0/60, Outsider 0/60, Blackstone Conqueror 0/60, Mage 0/60, Novice Pyromancer 0/60, World Traveler 0/60, Physical Arcanist 0/60, Field Medic 0/60, Unkillable 0/90, Path Less Traveled 0/90

Save for Tier 2

Micro-Biomancer 0/90, Realm Traveler 0/120, Alchemical Warrior 0/90, Pioneer 0/60, Alchemical Medic 0/60, Titan Slayer 0/90, Explorer 0/60, Giant Slayer 0/60, Superior Alchemist 0/60

Maybe

Novice 0/12, Trainee 0/60, Trapper 0/60, System Scholar 0/60, Survivor 0/60, Daredevil 0/60, Escapee 0/30, Lecturer 0/30, Steadfast Medic 0/60, Rebel 0/30, Arsonist 0/60

Unsorted

Woodsman 0/30, Hunter 0/30, Novice Ritualist 0/60, Feycaller 0/60, Fey Friend 0/60, Feybound 0/60, Feytouched 0/90, Physical Alchemist 0/90, Makeshift Alchemist 0/60, Practical Alchemist 0/60, Chemist 0/60, Biologist 0/60, Physicist 0/60, Experimenter 0/60, Scientific Revolutionary 0/90, Forerunner 0/60, Purifier 0/30, Master of Obairlann 0/60, Recluse 0/30, Primal Constructor 0/90, Primal Ritualist 0/90, Potter 0/30, Physical Laborer 0/30

Probably Not

Lumberjack 0/60, Way of the Empty Hand 0/60, Pyromaniac 0/30, Exile 0/30, Rebel 0/60, Master of the Ruined Tower 0/60, Razer of the Ruined Tower 0/60

No

Slave 0/12, Assassin 0/60, Killer 0/30, Traitor 0/60, Burglar 0/60

“Hmmm.”

“Any interesting insights? Actually, any thoughts about how to get rid of some of the Paths I don’t want?”

“Slave will definitely go away if you take Escapee, but probably if you take Master of Obairlann or any of my Paths.”

“Your paths? You mean the fey-related ones?”

Inion nodded, “Feytouched and Fey Friend especially. Killer and Assassin you won’t get to go away outside of a Pacifist path which you don’t want, you’d need to get a Loyalty path or something to be rid of Traitor, and Burglar… if you got a Reformed Criminal path, maybe? It’d probably cover for Assassin, too.”

She shrugged, “Not that any of those other than Slave is actually bad, you might even benefit from them- Killer would advance one of your Skills to be offensive in nature. Harvest, maybe, now that you have it. Or perhaps even First Aid. Assassin would do something similar, but more subtle in nature. If it could affect Alchemy, you’d end up with something poison-related almost certainly.

“Traitor… perhaps some sort of concealment Skill, advancing Identify, that would hide aspects of your information from Identify and its ilk.”

“Wait, from Identify?”

“Ya. It and Status are the main Skills which interact with the System, and while they’re both kind of ehhh…” she weighed her hands, “Generally, Status skills help you connect with the System, whereas Identify helps you connect the System to what’s around you. There’s probably as many exceptions to that as there are examples, but it helps convey the general trends. What returns when someone Identifies you can be influenced through lots of different routes. Status, Identify, even Stealth if he wasn’t lying…”

“Who?”

She waved her hand dismissively, “Doesn’t matter. Somebody I knew back when.

“But ya! Burglar would probably give you a stealth Skill from Flexibility if you wanted it.”

Edwin weighed that possibility. Tempting, but he suspected he didn’t want to have Burglar as a part of his Class, at least not this early on. It being one of his first ten Paths completed was bound to have a bigger effect than one of his first hundred, right? “I’ll pass, I think, though I suppose I’ll keep that in mind,” he considered something, “How do you know all of this stuff? I thought it was insanely complicated?”

“Experience, mostly. Paths have certain… tendencies, shall we say? Learning how to read them takes time, but once you get used to it, it’s relatively intuitive. It’s… okay. This is a drastically imperfect metaphor, but it’ll work.

“Think of each Path as a Class of its own. Then imagine what single Skill that Class would most want. For an Assassin, that’s probably gonna be a Skill which lets you kill quietly and completely undetected. A Burglar would want a Skill which turned them invisible, intangible, and completely silent. A Mage wants one which allows them to use every kind of magic ever, a Merchant would want something which enables them to have an infinite well of stock and a perfect knowledge of what their customer wants and how much they’re willing to pay. You following so far?”

“I think so… So, each Class has an ‘ideal Skill’ which is based around what their overall concept is based around?”

“Exactly! I knew you were smart. When you take that Path, it tries to make that ideal Skill, and to do so, it takes whatever Skill it has available to it- those which have advanced the fewest times- that’s already the closest to its ideal, and tries to make a new Skill out of it, using the old Skill as a foundation which more closely matches what it wants.”

“Okay, that makes sense. But what about for something simple? Like I can’t imagine that a Linguist would want anything more than just Polyglot.”

“In the case of a really close match, you’ll usually find that the new Skill is just a more focused or generalized version of the old Skill, though sometimes it’s almost identical to the old one and just provides an even greater benefit than before. That usually only happens if you use the same Path a ton of times, though.”

“What about the Skill Point requirements?”

“You can think of those as the fuel for the change. The more points used, the more drastic a change can be wrought. Though what’s considered a drastic change isn’t always obvious, it’s based on what the System sees, not what you do.”

“That… makes sense, I suppose. Then what about more abstract Paths, like my... ‘Feybound’ one?”

“Those are a bit more complicated, but you can still think of them as having a certain ideal Skill that they’re trying to get to.”

“Trophy paths?”

“The item-granting ones? Same sort of thing. If you fought wolves endlessly, what would you end up with? A lot of wolf pelts and teeth, and so Skills will give you something to approach your end.”

“I’m not sure if that entirely follows?”

Inion waved her hand, “It’s all an abstraction. Sometimes a ‘trophy path’ as you call them, will grant some hidden technique that your foe used. I heard a story about one druid who, upon slaying a menacing panther, received a Skill which allowed her to summon a spirit panther to fight alongside her.”

That sounded cool, “You can get Skills for summons? What about like… bonding with an animal or something? Getting a companion?”

Inion nodded, “Yep! Though you actually need a companion first, then you’ll be offered a Path relating to it, and completing it will help you bond in some way. If it takes to Status, you might be able to see and influence Paths for your companion, if it takes to a magic Skill, you might get a shapechanging ability, or perhaps a summon-teleport, any number of possibilities.”

“So then where does the influence of your current Class come into play? Or you mentioned accomplishments with a Skill changing what you get?”

“Well, it’s not a perfect analogy,” Inion agreed with a grimace, “Not that there really exists one. It’s all really complicated, and I seriously respect the moderators for making it.” As soon as she finished her statement, she flinched hard, “I should not have said… oh hey, no smiting. I guess I’m okay to talk about the mods, then? Ah. Just what you’ve already put together. So, what do you think, so I know what I can say?”

That caught Edwin seriously off-guard, “What I think? Uhhhh…. Well, I did put together that the System probably isn’t natural, but was made by someone, who I did presume was either the moderators or someone connected with them. I also think that it doesn’t apply to anything outside of Joriah, and though there are other worlds- maybe even another Joriah- none of them have the System. Instead, this was made for… some reason. Entertainment, perhaps? By beings of other realms, like Arcadia.

“I don’t know how the System works, but I suspect it overlays some kind of magic over everyone and everything in a way which isn’t detectable by normal magical means, either inherently or just by intentionally crafting an exclusion for everything which is System related. There’s probably more I could put together with a bit of time, but that’s all for now.”

Inion’s expression was unreadable, but Edwin liked to think that she was in shock, “How’d I do?”

She nodded, “You got a lot right, though not everything. Of course, I can’t tell you what you got wrong, or anything like that. But it’s nice to know what I don’t have to be as careful speaking around.”

“Happy to help?”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Yea- hey waitaminute-”

“You wanted my advice on your Paths?”

“…Yes. Can we get to that?”

Inion smiled, “Of course, now that you’re no longer pulling us off-topic.”

“I was the one pulling us off-topic? You were-”

“Would you like my help or not?”

Edwin bit back his tongue, “Continue.”

“So! You’ve got yourself a bit of a problem, don’t you? Some three hundred points below where you should be, given the skills of yours which have advanced? You need some careful planning, don’t you?”

“…Yeah. I’m really not sure what to do in that regard.”

“Well, you have a few advanced Skills with loads of levels.”

“Shouldn’t I wait to use those Points for when I’m evolving them, though?”

“What was I saying about interruptions?”

“…Sorry.”

“As I was saying, you have a few high-level advanced Skills, and they’ll only be higher level by the time you’d advance them. So, I’d say you should use those for any Paths which give you an Attribute.”

Edwin frowned.

“You may speak.”

He glared at the smug fey, “I was collecting my thoughts. How do Attributes fit into the whole ‘ideal Skill’ metaphor? Also, how would I know which will? Oh, or do you mean like after they reveal themselves to be Attribute-granting, then I mentally pretend those Points came from Almanac or whatever?”

“Yeah, exactly like that. Attributes… they come about when… oh man this is going to be tricky to explain without tripping into stuff I can’t say… let’s say the Class needs some aspect to properly function.

“A Mage needs mana to do anything, a Warrior needs to be able to survive hits they take, a Scout needs to be able to understand whatever they get, a Diplomat needs to influence those they meet, that sort of thing. It’ll also happen when the System notices there’s an easy Attribute to give, or something you really need. Again, it’s all quite complicated, I’m just giving a very general guide.”

“Fair enough. So then what does that mean?”

“Well, it means you only need to worry about your current Skills paying off your point lack, and not about any extra you’ll need for Attributes. That means you’ll want all of your Skills to be… what is that?”

“Seventeen points above their Path cost.” Edwin rolled his eyes at Inion’s glare, “You asked!” he sighed dramatically, “Sorry for interrupting.”

“I was getting there. But yes, seventeen points. So when all of your Skills are at least level seventy-seven, then you should start to advance them. If you’re feeling adventurous, get them to a hundred and seven and take all ninety point Paths! Now, that’ll take a while, but with my help and my Token, we might have you all set in less than a year! Or five years, if you wanna go with pricier Paths.”

“So long?”

“Hey, it takes most people some fifteen years to get to level sixty in their Skills. Advancing the last one was seen as the mark of an adult back in my day. Getting ten levels past that? Yeah, a year is making good time. Thirty past that? Count yourself lucky it isn’t a decade.”

“What about choosing Paths?”

She shrugged, “We can do that now if you really want, but you might want to just take them later, once you have more to choose between?”

He shrugged, “Whatever you think is best. Though this still feels a bit like ‘just do what I’ve been doing’ again.”

“Well, what you’ve been doing has worked well so far.”

Well, a year wasn’t that long, when she put it that way. Still, though. A year? That was a long time. But at the same time, that was also a year of being generally alone, with nobody but Inion to talk to save perhaps occasional trips into Vinstead for supplies?

It sounded so very isolated and alone.

“Sounds good to me.”

She laughed, “Perfect! Let’s get started.”