《Tsar Bomba》 Prologue Jacob Holloway was a man with only a few talents in life. He had been inordinately lucky every time he ever played a game of D&D with his group. He could take a package of ramen and turn it into a very delicious meal with his own secret recipe of spices and a couple of eggs. But his greatest talent was in creating gaming apps that just seemed to take off. Before he¡¯d started making game apps, Jacob had worked doing odd programming jobs on the internet. In his free time one day he¡¯d started work on an admittedly terrible little game that was incredibly simple. Just a bird dodging pipes with a counter to tell you how many you passed. That game somehow seemed to break the internet within days of him having released it. Jacob found himself going from struggling to pay the bills and rent every month, to buying his own house outright within a few weeks. Honestly his life did a total 180 from that moment on. Right now though¡­ Right now, he had no idea what was going on. He knew that he¡¯d been walking outside to take the trash out. He remembered walking, then suddenly he was where he currently found himself. Sitting at a desk inside a well-lit room. Looking around the room he found that there were no doors or windows. And there was no visible means of illumination within the room, yet it was bright. Most anyone who suddenly finds themselves suddenly in a different location with no idea how they got there would freak out. He certainly felt his heartrate rising in his chest as he processed his surroundings. Had he been kidnapped? Nothing felt weird or sluggish, so he didn¡¯t think he¡¯d been drugged. So how had he ended up here? Come to think of it¡­ yeah, he couldn¡¯t remember his own name for some reason. Then it all clicked, he had to be dreaming. He went to stand up when suddenly a feminine robotic voice flared throughout the room. ¡°Please remain seated until the System liaison arrives.¡± The voice made him jump at first but for some reason he felt like he should listen to it. So, he remained seated. Letting his mind wander. At least he knew what he was doing in this room now, waiting for the System liaison. He didn¡¯t know how long he¡¯d sat there waiting when suddenly there was a person seated across from him. As the person had been there the whole time. Normally this kind of thing would cause a person to jump out of there seat. But for some reason he couldn¡¯t bring himself to have any form of response. Like he¡¯d somehow been expecting someone to just appear and be there even though he was actually surprised. ¡°Ok, let¡¯s get started, shall we?¡± What he assumed must be the System liaison stated in a voice that he couldn¡¯t identify as having either masculine of feminine qualities. ¡°Your transfer was not expected, however, this one is happy to report that the System is pleased that it got you. Before we proceed, this one shall explain what has occurred.¡± The person pulled out a stack of papers and set them on the desk between them as it spoke. ¡°You were randomly selected as part of a trade between Systems. You and all that is yours has been transferred to this System from your old System. It is understandable if you are confused as this one is aware that your particular case was transferred from total system locked subrealm. Your world that you remember is part of an experiment maintained by your old system. Your world is far off from the norm of how the rest of the universe operates.¡± The person gestured to the papers on the desk, ¡°Now that this one has covered why you are here, we can take care of the matters at hand.¡± ¡°Wait! What do you mean transferred? What do you mean by system?¡± he interrupted the person across the desk. ¡°Please say or think clearly the words ¡®System Status¡¯ from what this one has seen of your file that should clear up a lot for you.¡± The person said He thought the words, knowing before he did that someone out there had answered his prayers, he was getting to be the protagonist of an isekia adventure.
Name: ??? Race: ???(?) Race Level: N/A Titles: None Class(es): None
Attributes ????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????
Skills N/A Spells N/A
BloodLine: Soul Well 385,695,801 [Blank] [Mundane Souls]
¡°Holy shit!¡± he exclaimed when the sheet popped up in his vision. ¡°Why don¡¯t I have a name? or Race? I¡¯m human, aren¡¯t I?¡± ¡°Your race has yet to be determined, this is why this one is here. Your transfer is unusual as you seem to have brought with you a great deal of souls. How you managed to acquire that many souls is beyond this one¡¯s knowledge. But the system has determined that it will not allow you to be populated into the Material Plane until a trade has been carried out. You will trade us your souls for whatever you like until there are no more left.¡± He sat there for a few moments not knowing what he should do or say. He needed information to make good decisions. He knew why he had a lot of souls though. It had been in his user agreements, a little line written in as a joke. If the person who agreed to the user agreement to play his games died before he did, he got to keep their soul. It had been meant as a joke but apparently that shit was real. And apparently a lot of people had agreed and died before he did. That was a lot of souls. But back to what was at hand he needed to learn what he was dealing with. This System was game like obviously meaning that he needed to know more about it before he made any decisions. ¡°First off¡­ How many souls will it cost me for you to answer any question I have regarding this System?¡± he asked. ¡°One Soul will be sufficient payment for any information you desire.¡± The person across from him said. ¡°What is the extra little question mark in brackets in the race column for?¡± he asked, it definitely was not the main thing he wanted to ask about, but he figured it would be best to start from top to bottom with his stat page before he got into the nitty gritty. ¡°That would be the Tier of the race.¡± The person responded ¡°What are the Tiers and how does it affect things?¡± ¡°The Tiers start a G-, G, G+. followed by F, E, D, C, B, A, S, O, and finally L. Each broken down into three Minus, Middle, and Plus for a total of thirty different Race Tiers. G- through G+ Tier receives 1 stat point to all unlocked attributes per Race level plus one free stat point to allocate. This increases by 1 stat point respectively per full tier until S Tier where the values begin to double at each minor Tier followed by tripling at the O Tiers then Quintupling at the L tiers.¡± The Person said in monotone So, an S- Tier would receive 14 stat points to all unlocked attributes per level and 14 free points to use. S Tier would be 28, S+ would be 56! Then it started Tripling at the O Tiers? That was all really good information to know. But the most interesting tidbit was hidden in the words ¡®Unlocked Attributes¡¯ that meant that there were hidden attributes that most people didn¡¯t have access to. He tucked that tidbit in his mind for later. ¡°What Tier will I be starting off as?¡± The person cocked its head to the side for a moment before responding. ¡°It has been decided that you will be starting off as a G- Tier race. Though the race itself has yet to be determined.¡± It spoke.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. ¡°What Tier are humans?¡± he asked ¡°B+¡± ¡°What about other sapient Races?¡± ¡°Sapient races all start at B+ Tier.¡± ¡°So when I am ¡®populated¡¯ will I still retain my sapience?¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Is there a way for me to retain my faculties and sapience when I am ¡®populated¡¯ into the world?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± The one-word answers with no elaboration were irritating. But he could play twenty questions to get to the bottom of it. ¡°How would I go about that?¡± he asked. ¡°You would need to trade souls with the system for skills that raise your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma stats to the threshold needed for sapience in that particular race. The requirements are slightly different for each one.¡± The person spoke. As much as he wanted to nail down the particulars, he decided that he needed to move on. ¡°What are Titles and what do they do?¡± he asked. ¡°Titles are exactly what their name implies¡­ Titles. As to what they do it depends on the Title. The System awards them based on significant actions or achievements. They can do anything from provide bonus stats to percentage increases or just ensure that you will never grow hair. There are a great many Titles.¡± ¡°Ok, Classes. How does one get a class? What do the Classes do? Can one have multiple classes? If so, what are the benefits and what are the drawbacks?¡± he asked ¡°If you can think of a profession there is a class for it. Classes are leveled independently from race level, provide varying amounts of stat points to specific stats, and come with skills oriented towards that class. You can have as many classes as you qualify for. Qualification for Classes is mostly dependent on the Skills you gain but is also influenced by Race, Titles, and Race Level. Each Class taken, with the exception of a few that are hard to get, adds to the total EXP required to level your Race.¡± The person replied. ¡°How does one normally acquire skills within the System?¡± ¡°By preforming actions, you will build up experience in that particular skill until it is granted to you by the system. One may also utilize a skill candle, or trade with the System at a town or city crystal. And before you ask, Spells are the same.¡± ¡°Then tell me about my Bloodline thing. And Bloodlines in general.¡± He said as that was the last thing on his stat page. ¡°Bloodline may be a misleading term as it is not actually tied to blood, but to the very essence of your soul. Your particular Bloodline is unlike any the System has ever seen. It acts a storage area for Souls, but somehow strips them down to a blank canvas while feeding the energy of those souls into you. This translates into +0.01 per hour increased regeneration of all resources.¡± The implications of that were incredible but hardly important right now as he was going to have to go into this new life without the millions of souls, he has available right now. So now he needed to make sure he retained his sapience when he was ¡®populated¡¯ into the world. But knowing that he was going to be starting out as the weakest of the weak made him think of something. His own mortality. Maybe he could become immortal? ¡°Can you show me a list of Skills that either make the user immortal or somehow able to survive death?¡± he had barely finished asking the question when the blue boxes populated his vision showing him a list of skills.
Immortality lvl.N/A The bearer of this skill cannot die. Cost: 100,000 souls
Perpetual Rebirth lvl.1 The bearer of this skill, when killed or otherwise brought to death, dies. Will be reborn as the first race they started as in the system. They will retain all memories, all skills/skill levels, and all Classes/Class Levels through each rebirth. Cost: 1,000,000 souls
On first glance one would wonder why a skill like Immortality was cheaper than a skill like Perpetual Rebirth. But it made sense to him. If you couldn¡¯t kill something you could do something like seal it in a block of concrete and dump it in an ocean where it would be stuck forever. Immortality was a trap. Perpetual Rebirth was amazing though. ¡°I would like to purchase Perpetual Rebirth please.¡± He said to the strange person across the desk. The person nodded and suddenly he felt a strange shifting inside of himself. Then it was done. He checked his status page and saw the skill listed there under his skills. It almost made him laugh. With that pesky thing called mortality out of the way he could focus on retaining his mental faculties now. ¡°I want all of the hidden and locked stats unhidden and unlocked. And I mean all of them.¡± He said this was the first step in his master plan. The person across from cocked its head to the side for several seconds before answering. ¡°The cost of such a thing would be 100,000,000 Souls, with the addendum of removing free to spend points as a reward for levels. The free to spend points will be reallocated as additional points to racial benefits. I will warn you that some of these stats are not meant for mortal minds to comprehend, and many of them were not meant to be unlocked by anything ever. Is this acceptable?¡± the person asked. Not being able to spend free points to control his own build would be pretty terrible. But he would at least still get the points. His build would have to be controlled through Skills and Classes that he picked up. The warning was interesting. Stats that weren¡¯t meant for mortals. Maybe he would be OP just because of that? Who knows? He thought it all through for several minutes before he nodded. ¡°I accept.¡± He spoke The second he accepted he felt a strange utterly alien sensation wash over him for a moment. It was¡­ pleasantly unpleasant? If you can understand that? The sensation only lasted for a few moments then it was gone. The person across from was staring at him intently. As if expecting something to go wrong. ¡°We had no idea what would actually happen there. Your soul could have been overloaded and caused a new universe to form for all we knew¡­ But you appear to be stable¡­ We have no clue how this will effect your evolutionary tree though¡­¡± the person wasn¡¯t actually speaking to him but to itself as if he weren¡¯t there. But he¡¯d heard another interesting tidbit there. ¡°How does one increase their Race Tier?¡± it was a question he should have asked earlier but had forgotten. ¡°The G tiers, all of them, require one to reach race level five. At that point they will be given the option to evolve into a new Race based on skills, stats, Titles, or Classes even. The options vary and are not only geared towards moving up the Tier chain. A human for instance, could evolve into an orc if they met the right criteria. Those are Lateral evolutions that allow one to follow other paths of Evolution. F tiers require Level ten for the option to evolve. E tiers level 20, D tiers Level 30, C tiers Level 40, B Tiers Level 50, A Tiers Level 100, S Tiers level 250, O Tiers level 500, and L Tiers 1000.¡± The person spoke That was a lot to unpack. It seemed geared towards rapidly getting creatures to the A tier then practically stopping them at S Tier. Although he was unsure how much EXP was required to level. Or how to get EXP. ¡°How does one acquire EXP to level up?¡± he asked ¡°Completing quests, killing creatures or people, leveling skills, absorbing cores that spirits coalesce into when killed, crafting, eating certain things, drinking certain things. Honestly, almost everything one does can give EXP if done correctly.¡± ¡°What skills will I need to have to maintain my Sapience when ¡®Populated¡¯ into the world?¡± again almost before he finished speaking a three blue boxes with skills listed on them popped into his vision.
Analyze lvl.5 This skill is used to see system information on visible targets. +1 Int per level in Analyze Cost: 100,000 souls
Zen Meditation lvl.5 This skill is used to concentrate and remember things clearly. +1 Wis per level in Zen Meditation Cost: 100,000 souls
Mimicry lvl.5 This is a passive skill that allows the user to more easily mimic sounds, behaviors, or actions of others. +1 Cha per level in Mimicry Cost: 100,000 souls
101,300,001 souls traded away so far. 280 some odd million more to go. He wondered if there were any Titles he could buy and low and behold there was one, but he wasn¡¯t going to buy it. It was called ¡°Pay To Win¡± for a million souls and it increased stat gains per level by 1. But the name of the Title made his very soul cringe at the thought of it. Those were the worst games ever. Even though he¡¯d made one or two of them himself¡­ He wasn¡¯t going to stoop to that level. He was already kind of paying to win anyways but it wasn¡¯t by choice. Then another thought occurred to him. ¡°Can I get an inventory? That can hold like anything and everything but not weigh me down or anything like that?¡± he asked, hopeful that there was such a thing. Just as he¡¯d hoped a box popped up with a skill.
Soul Vault lvl.1 Can store and retrieve items from a pocket dimension created inside of the user¡¯s soul. Storage space: Unlimited Limitations: Items must be solid; liquids or gases must be stored inside a container. Note: Upon death any items stored inside the Soul Vault will be forcefully ejected. Cost: 1,000,000 souls
¡°I¡¯ll buy it!¡± he proclaimed. Feeling the skill being added to his repertoire as another million souls poured out of his Soul Well. ¡°How much to increase the level of all of my skills to ten?¡± he asked ¡°100,000,000 Souls.¡± ¡°Why the massive cost?¡± ¡°Level 10 is a milestone marker where additional effects, potential derivative skills, or skill evolutions occur. The value is reflective of the potential.¡± The person said. He waffled back and forth on it for a few minutes considering what benefits he might squeeze out of it. Finally, he decided that it would probably be a good idea. Nodding his head he spoke, ¡°I can agree to that price.¡± And boom another hundred million down the drain. ¡°What else would you like to trade for?¡± ¡°Can I give myself a name?¡± he asked To his surprise the person cocked his head to the side for a few moments before answering. ¡°For the rest of the Souls you have to trade, the System is willing to allow you to name yourself.¡± The person said. He felt his own eyes widen at that. He still had over a hundred million souls. The fact that this System valued naming himself over everything else he¡¯d purchased meant that there was probably a huge significance to this. In almost all the old stories, folklore, religions, and superstitions names had power. Hoping that he was right He decided. He couldn¡¯t remember his old name, but he could remember his old Gamertag, Tsar Bomba, the emperor bomb. The name of the most powerful nuclear weapon humanity had ever tested. The blast wave of the explosion circled the entire globe three time. ¡°Then I name myself Tsar Bomba.¡± Tsar said and he felt the world, neigh, reality itself accept the name. He was about to ask what happens next when the person across from him spoke. ¡°Beginning Population of entity known as Tsar Bomba.¡± Then everything went black. Chapter 1 - Dying Sucks Tsar did not have time to try and look at the notifications that were flaring in the corner of his vision. Well, vision wasn¡¯t the right word for it as he was currently completely and utterly blind. Underwater, surrounded by wriggling things. One of which he was sure that he¡¯d killed. Whatever it was had bumped into him the moment he became conscious and for some reason his instinctual reaction had been to bite into it for all he was worth. For some reason it hadn¡¯t tasted half bad either. After that the world had become a blur of pain, biting, blacking out, coming too, and fighting again. He really did not know how long it had been. But he was getting pissed off about the words that kept getting pushed into his vision that were accompanied by nothing but agony every time, in big bold lettering You Have Died Respawning He wasn¡¯t sure how many times he¡¯d seen those four fucking words now, but he was incredibly angry at this point. He hadn¡¯t even figured out what he kept spawning as yet. But he didn¡¯t have time to sit back and look at his stat page and read through all of the notifications. All he had figured out at this point was that whatever he was, he was blind, submerged in water but not drowning. And he was getting eaten over and over again. Sure, he¡¯d killed a bunch of whatever was attacking him too. But he¡¯d died so many times now. Damn was he glad that he¡¯d gotten the Perpetual Rebirth skill. Otherwise, he would have already been dead dead. Like D.E.D dead. Instead, he was just mostly dead, but recovering. His mind was turning to humor to try and counteract the horror he was living and dying through right now. After what felt like an eternity of fighting and dying over and over in a dark pit under water Tsar found himself savagely ripping apart the corpse of his final fallen enemy with his teeth. He actually didn¡¯t seem to have hands or even arms or legs for that matter. But anyway, the water around him was finally still and he could take a moment to check his notifications and see what the hell he¡¯d been born into this new world as.
Congratulations Your Skill Perpetual Rebirth has reached Level 10! If the skill holder has any form of Bound Inventory, skill or otherwise, the contents of the inventory will be retained across deaths.
Congratulations Your skill Analyze has reached Level 10! Can now use Analyze to see the five highest stats of the subject Analyzed.
Congratulations Your skill Zen Meditation has reached Level 10! Can now use this skill completely recall, replay, and examine memories in detail.
Congratulations Your skill Mimicry has reached Level 10! You can now attempt to copy skills you have observed.
Congratulations Your skill Soul Vault has reached Level 10! Items stored within the Soul Vault will now be suspended in time.
That was all a lot to take in. But there was more to see yet. The next box was a different color than the rest had been.
Congratulations You have named yourself and earned the Title: Self Named Effects: +10 Willpower per Race Level Gained
Most of the notifications were either ¡®You killed unknown creature¡¯ or ¡®you died¡¯ notifications that Tsar just skimmed through. Though he did get another one that was different.
Congratulations? You have killed the very first being you encountered on your first day of life and earned the Title: Savage Effects: +1 strength
Finally, Tsar was done with the notifications, and he could see what was going on with his stat page. He hadn¡¯t looked at it since he¡¯d had the System unlock all of his stats. It was time to take a look at what he actually was and see what his baseline was.
Name: Tsar Bomba Race: Life-Mote Tadpole(G-) Race Level: 0 Titles: [Self Named] [Savage] Class(es): None selected
[Sp 4/5] 0.15sph Resource Pools [Hp 5/5] 0.25hph [Mp 5/5] 0.25mph
Attributes Strength: 1 Dexterity: 1 Constitution: 1 Toughness: 1 Fortitude: 1 HP Regen: 1 Vitality: 1 Lifespan: 5 Attributes Intelligence: 11 Wisdom: 11 Perception: -1 Charisma: 11 Willpower: 10 MP Regen: 1 MP Capacity: 1 See next page¡­ 1 of ???
Skills Perpetual Rebirth lvl.10 Analyze lvl.10 Zen Meditation lvl.10 Mimicry lvl.10 Soul Vault lvl.10 Spells N/A
BloodLine: Soul Well 15 [Blank] [Mundane Souls] +0.15 per hour to all resource pools
Apparently, Tsar had managed to pick up fifteen souls since he¡¯d been alive? Or repeatedly dying at least. Also, the vast majority of his stats were things that he couldn¡¯t understand at all. The only thing he understood from them was that they were probably not meant to be touched in the first place. Some of them were in the negative values and some of them were in the hundreds and he had no clue what they meant. He quickly discovered that he could set up his Page how he wanted it so he moved all of the stats he couldn¡¯t understand onto a separate page and only left the ones he understood. Then he separated them by Primary and Secondary stats. He didn''t really know what that meant but he set it up anyway, The next thing he did was click on the Class section which brought up a menu with available classes. There was only one available.
Occultist The Occultist class is only available to those who have the Skills to see, to remember, to copy, and to hold secrets even beyond the grave. This class offers Occultist Class Level% reduction in EXP increases caused by Classes to race level advancement, +5 Intelligence, +5 Wisdom, +5 Perception Per class level and access to the Occultist Skill tree.
Tsar instantly took the class. If he got it to level 100, he could basically take any class he wanted without ever having to worry about increased EXP requirements for Leveling his race. If that was how it worked¡­ anyways after taking the class another screen popped up in his vision.
Congratulations You have taken the Occultist Class and can now access the Occultist Skill Tree. You are now an Occultist Level 1. Stat points have been allocated. You have gained the skills: [Mind of the Occultist], [Auto Translate], and [Find Hidden Things]
Mind of the Occultist This is a passive skill that allows the user to see hidden information and spot the truth in lies. Applies the Intelligence stat to MP Capacity. Applies Wisdom Stat to MP Regen.
Auto Translate This is a passive skill that will teach you any language you see or hear at least three words of.
Find Hidden Things This is a passive skill that will guide you towards things that hidden or secret.
Tsar wondered if it was just him, or did the System sometimes give out really detailed information and other times be vague as all hell. If he could have shrugged, he would have¡­ Now to address the elephant in the room. he¡¯d been ignoring it since he opened his stat page and saw it¡­ He was a freaking tadpole! Oh but at least it seemed like he could see now. His Perception stat was now 4 where it had been -1 before. Time to ignore the fact that he was a tadpole again and check out his surroundings. That didn¡¯t really work. The water around him was murky and dark. He was either very deep, in a cave, or it was nighttime¡­ Or his eyesight was just shit. He quickly checked his Mp Capacity and regen to see how much it was affected by his new class skills. MP[5/85] 1.85Mph So, one point in capacity increased his pool by five points, and one point in regen increased the speed by 0.1 mana per hour. His current effective stat points in Regen and Capacity were both 17 at this point¡­ That only distracted him for few seconds before he thought about his race again.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. ¡°How is a Tadpole supposed to be its own race!¡± he would have yelled if it weren¡¯t for the fact that he couldn¡¯t really make any sounds at this point. ¡°A tadpole is just a baby frog! Not a whole species in and of itself.¡± On second thought, tadpoles were also baby toads¡­ Yeah, he preferred becoming a frog. They were cooler looking in Tsar¡¯s eyes. Now with the mildly disconcerting fact that he was a Tadpole out of the way, Tsar decided that he had better start actually moving around and figuring out what was what before he went and got himself killed again. Figuring out locomotion was surprisingly not a chore. His body already knew how to move, and soon he was swimming through the murky water with alacrity. A notification had popped up in the bottom right side of his vision as he swam around but he ignored it. He couldn¡¯t be distracted every time the System decided he¡¯d done something noteworthy at this point in his life. It would eat up time and probably get him killed if he was distracted. As he swam around, he kept running into the corpses of fellow tadpoles. And just because he could he popped them into his Soul Vault every time he found them. You never know when it might be useful to have a few corpses. Maybe he could use them as a distraction if he ran into a predator? Honestly though, swimming around aimlessly got pretty boring after a while. His eyesight seemed to be improving a little bit, or it was turning to day and there was actually just more light around him now. He decided to go and check. Why not? So, he swam in the direction he felt was probably up until he suddenly broke the surface and was looking up into the canopy of what looked like some kind of mangrove tree. It was definitely dark out, but it actually did seem like it was getting lighter so he assumed the sun must be rising soon. He was swimming along the surface minding his own business when he caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of his eye. He had no clue what it was, but he ducked under the water and dove straight for the bottom. Then he heard and felt a crash in the water behind him as he desperately dove down to get away from whatever was trying to get at him. Desperately dumping half of the corpses he¡¯d acquired as he explored in a desperate bid to try and stay alive. He ran full force into ground and felt like he might have given himself a concussion, but he didn¡¯t stop there. As he¡¯d already half planted himself into the mud, he decided to use it to hopefully keep himself hidden. It worked, because after several minutes of waiting and hearing the thrashing of things moving in the water above him everything calmed down and Tsar found himself still alive. Now that Tsar found himself relatively safe and hidden from everything that might try and kill him for the moment, he decided that now was as goo a time as any to check those damn notifications that kept grabbing at his attention.
Congratulations You have Learned the Skill: Swimming lvl.1 Effects: +1 Str, +1 Con, Reduced Stamina consumption while swimming, and increase lung capacity by 1% per level in swimming. 10 EXP Earned
Congratulations Your skill Swimming has reached lvl.3 20 EXP Earned
Congratulations You have learned the Skill: Enhanced Eyesight lvl.1 Effects: +1 Perception per level in Enhanced Eyesight 10 EXP Earned
Congratulations You have learned the Skill: Decoy lvl.1 Effects: When using Decoy increase the chances of escape from hostiles by 0.1% per Decoy deployed. 10 EXP Earned
Congratulations You have learned the Skill: Stealth lvl. 1 Effects: Makes you less likely to be spotted by anyone or anything through Perception. 10 EXP Earned
That was all well and good. But the real kicker came after he¡¯d read the notifications. It was like he didn¡¯t actually receive the rewards until he acknowledged the notifications. As suddenly, he felt a wave of strength surge through him and a tingling noise as another notification popped up.
Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Level Up! Congratulations! You have reached Race Level 5 Allocating stat points Evolution Threshold Reached Would you like to evolve? Y/N
Of course, Tsar wanted to evolve! But how had it been that easy? He¡¯d assumed it would take him a while to reach level five. Though he wasn¡¯t sure how much EXP he needed to level up It must not be very much because he¡¯d only gained 60 EXP. Clicking the Y option brought up only a single evolutionary option. [Life-Mote Frog(G)]. He clicked it and immediately passed out. Tsar awoke he knew not how long after he¡¯d passed out. But when he awoke, he suddenly found that he had the need to breath. Which was an issue seeing as how he was buried in mud and who knows how deep underwater. He frantically extricated himself from the mud and pushed off the ground finding himself rocketing up through the water and even breaching the surface. Apparently, he wasn¡¯t really very deep, his tadpole body had just been very small. Taking a deep breath of air that was heavy with the scent of rotten vegetation Tsar was annoyed when he noticed that there were more notifications blaring in the corner of his vision. He would get to them soon, but for right now he needed to find a safe place to examine what changes he had just undergone. It seemed like he couldn¡¯t go five minutes without the System trying to tell him something. He quickly swam his way into the roots of one of the mangrove looking trees and hid himself where he was partially submerged. Trying his best to sense every bit of his surroundings. Once he was satisfied that nothing was coming to get him in his hiding spot Tsar brought up his notifications.
Congratulations You have evolved into a Life-Mote Frog(G)! Evolution Bonus: +10 to all unlocked stats. Racial Bonuses: Gain the Skill: Utility Tongue lvl.1 +2 Per, +2 Cha per race level as a Life-Mote Frog
Ok so that was nice, only one notification that was actually pretty straightforward and informative. The evolution bonus to his stats were awesome. He was going to have to see what Utility Tongue did but now it was time to look at his stat page. Again¡­
Name: Tsar Bomba Race: Life-Mote Frog(G) Race Level: 0 EXP 20/100 Titles: [Self Named] [Savage] Class(es): Occultist(lvl.1) Death Counter 32
Options Menu¡­
[Sp 84/95] 0.15sph Resource Pools [Hp 80/80] 1.85hph [Mp47/235]4.85mph
Primary Attributes Strength: 19 Dexterity: 16 Constitution: 19 Toughness: 16 Intelligence: 31 Wisdom: 31 Perception: 20 Charisma: 26 Vitality: 16 Secondary Attributes Fortitude: 16 HP Regen: 16 Lifespan: 20 Willpower: 75 MP Regen: 16(47) MP Capacity: 16(47) See next page¡­ 1 of ???
Skills Mind of the Occultist lvl.N/A Auto Translate lvl.N/A Perpetual Rebirth lvl.10 Analyze lvl.10 Zen Meditation lvl.10 Mimicry lvl.10 Soul Vault lvl.10 Swimming lvl.3 Stealth lvl.1 Enhanced Eyesight lvl.1 Decoy lvl.1 Utility Tongue lvl.1 Find Hidden Things lvl.1 Spells N/A
BloodLine: Soul Well 15 [Blank] [Mundane Souls] +0.15 per hour to all resource pools
First off, Holy shit that¡¯s a lot of stat growth! Second! Why the hell was there a Death Counter? Third? What was that options menu all about? He mentally tapped it and was greeted with another screen. This one had a few options that he wished he¡¯s had on before. ¡°HUD¡± and ¡°Clock¡± He didn¡¯t know what all the other options were, but HUD gave him a heads-up-display that layered colored bars representing his resource pools into his vision in a very intuitive way. After that he checked out the description of Utility Tongue and found that it basically made it so that his tongue was able to do more things. Tsar couldn¡¯t help but notice that there were no stats that effected stamina regen. If it weren¡¯t for his Soul Well, he¡¯d have no way of recovering it. His only thought was that SP was normally recovered by eating and sleeping. It made him wonder if the regen he was getting from the Soul Well would make it that he needed less sleep¡­ Less food maybe? Speaking of food, Tsar was hungry, and he had no idea what he was supposed to eat. He still had a bunch of Life-Mote Tadpoles in his inventory. He didn¡¯t know if his current race was carnivorous or what so he decided to wait and see if he could find anything before he tried eating any of them. With System stuff out of the way Tsar decided that it was time to explore a little and see what was around. Climbing out of his hiding place onto the side of the tree he was currently under he discovered what his nose had already been telling him. It was a swamp. But with so many trees it might as well have been a jungle. Birds where chirping and singing in tunes Tsar had never heard before, and in the distance, he heard the occasional branch snapping. This place was an untamed wilderness. Tsar knew very little about survival in the wild. And everything he did know, which was a very small amount, he¡¯d learned from videos online and were things that applied to humans. How was a frog supposed to start a fire? Did he even need to worry about water potentially making him sick? After a thorough review of his own survival memories using Zen Meditation for the first time. Tsar realized that he actually knew a lot more than he¡¯d known. Using Zen Meditation was like watching his past as an interactive 3D movie. Somehow the skill cause details that there was no way you¡¯d actually remember to be there. Though again most of the knowledge he¡¯d been able to retrieve using Zen Meditation was useless to a frog without opposable thumbs. So, for now Tsar just decided to explore, get skills, and level his skills. That seemed like it would genuinely be the best way to level up for now seeing as he didn¡¯t have any real combat skills. The first thing he did was really focus on his hearing, the sounds around him. Trying to pick out details and directions of noises. The reason? He¡¯d gotten Enhanced Eyesight and he was pretty sure it was because he was straining to try and see. Hopefully he could pick up something like Enhanced Hearing if that was a thing. If it worked, he would focus on the other senses. Then he¡¯d try and figure something else out. If he could get enough skills, then practically everything he ever did would be pushing those skills up and getting him EXP in the meanwhile. Long term goal? Evolve into a naturally Sapient Race so that he could join society in this world. Short term goal? Survive! Best way to do that? Level and obtain skills. How to Level and Obtain skills? Do all the things apparently. It did not take long with Tsar straining his ears as much as he could before he did in fact obtain the Enhanced Hearing skill. Which prompted him start sniffing everything to try and get Enhanced smelling or something like that. The discovery that Skills were practically as easy to get as trying to do the thing you wanted the skill for over and over until you got it led to Tsar being lightheaded as he took deep sniff after deep sniff of the air. It took Tsar the rest of the day, but he acquired Enhanced Smelling lvl.1, Enhanced Touch lvl.1, Enhanced Taste lvl.1, and Jumping lvl.1. Jumping he¡¯d acquired just by trying to move around, all it did was make his jumps take less energy and move him farther. The interesting thing had happened when he got all five of the sensory skills. They¡¯d all combined into a single new skill.
Enhanced Five Senses lvl.1 All five mundane senses are enhanced beyond the norm. Easier to see through Stealth. +5 Perception per level
It was as much as he could have asked for. Now he was going to be leveling that skill with everything he did. It was awesome. Also, each skill he got had given him 10 EXP. So, he¡¯d gained 50 EXP just from learning the skills! Only 30 more to go until he reached level 1. Tsar was pretty hyped about the days gains as he found a bunch of roots to hide in for the night. After carefully hiding himself between two roots and laying down flat as he could. Tsar found that he was actually quite comfortable and was easily able to fall asleep. Much to Tsar¡¯s surprise nothing attacked him in the night. Though partway through the night he did wake up due to hunger pangs. His stomach telling him quite fervently that it needed something, anything. So, he had reluctantly popped one of the Life-Mote Tadpole corpses out of his inventory. It was fairly large. At least in comparison to his current body which he had no idea about size wise. He hadn¡¯t so much as chewed the corpse as swallowed it whole. instantly he noted that his SP regen shot way up as his stomach settled and he got back to sleep. Now it was morning, and his stomach was again empty. Reluctantly Tsar started the morning off with a rare Tadpole steak. Meaning he swallowed another of the corpses whole. Honestly it did not taste bad, it didn¡¯t really have much of a taste at all. Tsar didn¡¯t think he had teeth meant for actual chewing though as he ran his tongue over them, he revised that opinion to he might be able to chew the corpses, but he didn¡¯t want to. Sneaking out of his hidey hole, Tsar began exploring the swamp again. He had no clue where he actually was right now, but he figured that if he just kept wandering, he¡¯d eventually find something interesting. And find something interesting he did. As Tsar was practicing his skills, especially Utility Tongue, which was actually damn useful. It practically made Tsar¡¯s tongue into a stretchy hand that he could grab things with. He stumbled upon a scene where two of the swamps Apex predators were squaring off. At least he hoped that they were the Apex predators and not regular old mobs. One of them looked like a hippo¡­ If a hippo had armor plating made of bone and a pair of horns jutting out of its head. The other seemed like an anaconda. Only someone had gone to the creators of the Monster Hunter games and told them to make it. The two things were hissing and growling at each other while circling what looked like the corpse of a regular old alligator. They were all much larger than Tsar and when he¡¯d stumbled upon the scene, he quickly ducked into the water then hid himself among the tall grass to watch what went down. Apparently, it was all posturing on the part of the giant monster snake. Because after several minutes of back and forth growling and hissing the snake backed off. Now you might be wondering why Tsar didn¡¯t use Analyze on the monsters¡­ He forgot that he could in the moment. He¡¯d been too caught up in the tension and playing an old British guy¡¯s voice in head narrating the scene to remember. And by the time he did remember the skill, he had long vacated the area. After realizing that he should have analyzed the two monsters Tsar would have sworn at himself if he could. He vowed to try and use the skill on everything he found. But he was back to trying to level his skills and acquire new ones. Making noise is something that all frogs do. They chirp, croak, squeal, and make all sorts of noises. Tsar started making noises whenever he heard other frogs around making the same noises. He wasn¡¯t sure what the noises were for, but he was hoping to acquire a new skill from doing it. And so, the day passed as Tsar slipped from tree to tree. Through murky water and reeds. As he practiced his current skills and tried to get new ones. When he finally settled down into hollowed out rotten log for the night Tsar had leveled his jumping, swimming, stealth and enhanced five senses skill by one, Utility Tongue had gone up by two and he¡¯d acquired a new one.
Singing lvl.1 This skill enhances vocalization range and depth. Enhances lung capacity by 1% per skill level. +1 to Charisma per skill level when singing.
It was the first skill that Tsar had gotten that essentially acted a self-buff for stats. Maybe he could pick up a Bard class and learn some party buffing skills¡­ you know in case he ever actually joined a party. He wasn¡¯t planning on being a frog forever. Especially because he¡¯d gone up by two race levels because of the EXP from skills today, 180 EXP in total, so he was on his way up. It turns out that apparently each level going up required the same amount of EXP. At G Tier apparently that meant 100 EXP per level, and the excess from before he¡¯d leveled still applied. So now at race Level 2 Tsar was starting to feel pretty good about himself. Especially his willpower stat. It was sitting pretty at 97 points now! He didn¡¯t know what the stat affected but having stats that high had to be some kind of record for a level 2 frog. Although if it were a record the system probably would have been bugging him with a new Title or some such. He wasn¡¯t all that tired so as he sat there to wait out the night, Tsar scrolled through the vast pages of unlocked stats he had to see if any that he actually could read were hidden among the masses. Sure, enough there were. He¡¯d found two already and he moved them over to his main stat page so he could see them. Not that it affected anything because he lacked the ability to place free stat points. He just wanted to be able to see them. The two stats he¡¯d found probably sixty pages in and were Soul at 18 points, and Aura at 18 points which meant that they must have started at 1. He had no clue what they did, but it was nice to see words instead of crazy symbols that he didn¡¯t understand. Someday he would probably learn what all of the different stats did. But not today. Chapter 2 Time to evolve again Tsar was feeling good about himself. He had spent the past week trying to level his skills to the utmost of his ability. But it was slow going. He¡¯d gotten Swimming, Jumping, Enhanced Five Senses, Utility Tongue, and Singing to level 5. All of that meant that he¡¯d reached Level 4 in his Race Level and only needed 10 Exp to hit level five. The sweet, sweet call of evolution was at his fingertips. Come to think of it Tsar wasn¡¯t sure if frog digits were considered fingers. But anyways his skill leveling seemed to have crawled to a halt. It had been a whole day since he¡¯d gone up a single skill level in anything. Which was irritating. Obviously, his skill levels would slow down in their progress, but he hadn¡¯t thought that they would practically hit a wall at level 5. The only one that he hadn¡¯t leveled since he got it was Decoy. And he wasn¡¯t about to go purposefully trying to get the swamps predators to chase him so he could level it. Honestly, he was probably just being impatient about it all. But he really wanted to get those last ten experience points and evolve¡­ so he¡¯d hatched a plan. A plan to leach EXP off of the Hippo Monsters. He¡¯d learned their name now as he¡¯d analyzed them. They were called Plated Hippos(C), which was pretty appropriate. Tsar had learned a lot over the past week about his local ecosystem. The Plated Hippos seemed to be omnivores, grazing on the grasses, and preying on the larger wildlife, like the caiman that were very prevalent throughout the swamp¡¯s waters. What he¡¯d found out about the Plated Hippos though was that they completely ignored Life-Mote Frogs. Life-Mote Frogs were everywhere and seemed to be a food source of the smaller predators around. By observing the other Frogs Tsar had discovered what their main food source was and couldn¡¯t believe he¡¯d missed it. All over the place in the swamp were little slugs called Rock Slugs. They weren¡¯t even a G- tier creature, they were just Rock Slugs. The saddest part about them was that they didn¡¯t even have souls. But they filled the stomach, so Tsar wasn¡¯t going to complain. Anyways his plan was simple. He was going to go sit on the Alpha of a herd of the Plated Hippos and start mimicking the sounds he¡¯d heard the Caiman making. His goal was to use the Hippos as a trap to kill things for him. That should net him some EXP right? So that is what he was doing at this moment. Sitting on the back of a Plated Hippo, along with two other Life-Mote who had already been there when he¡¯d found the herd. He started his mimicked calls soon after. The Hippos immediately reacted to the sound, turning this way and that, trying to identify where their prey was but soon stopped. Tsar repeated the process several times over a couple of hours before he got results. And oh boy he may have messed up. Although he wanted creatures to die here so it could be called a success too. His trap had worked a little too well. The herd of hippos was only about twenty strong. The number of Caiman that came out of the swamps grasses expecting to find either a mate or something else was easily fifty. It was hard to tell because a lot of them went underwater the moment they came close enough to see the hippos. As soon as the Hippos spotted the caiman a veritable feeding frenzy/slaughter of the pore gators went down. The commotion somehow causing another herd of hippos to come charging in. Which started a fight between the herds, which seemingly devolved into a mad house until one of the hippo alphas managed to kill the other. The whole time Tsar just watched the carnage he had instigated from the safety of a tree. After the conflict was over Tsar simply sat back in the tree branches looking over his notifications. It had worked even better than he could have imagined. He got a new skill out of it, and he got to see the Alphas using some sort of charge attack that was definitely a skill which he might be able to replicate if he spent the time to try it out.
Congratulations You have successfully set and sprung a trap using your natural environment and potentially hostile forces. Leading to the deaths of more than 25 enemies. For this feat you have been awarded the Title: Lesser Tactician Effects: Gain [Lesser Tacticians Battle Map], Gain 1% more EXP from battles involving 20 to 50 combatants. This is an upgradeable title, participate in bigger warfare operations to upgrade.
Lesser Tacticians Battle Map Adds a small map into the HUD function. Displays up to 100 yards around the user and can track up to fifty individuals or monsters at a time.
Congratulations You either killed or were the main reason why 35X Caiman(D+), 4X Plated Hippos(C), and 1X Plated Hippo Alpha(C+) were killed. EXP Boosted due to killing enemies Three and Four full Tiers above your own Racial Tier. EXP boosted for killing enemies more than twice your level. Total EXP Gained 2,510
Congratulations You have reached Race Level 5, Banking excess EXP You have fulfilled the conditions (Save more than double the necessary EXP to evolve to the next Racial Tier) to qualify for a Lateral Evolution. You may now Evolve. Would you like to proceed? Y/N {Evolving laterally consumes all excess EXP}
That last notification was music to Tsar little frog ears. But more importantly he realized that this was the first time he¡¯d truly seen anything interesting pop up due to his Occultist Class. He knew that the different font and color of the text in the notification was normally hidden information that his class had somehow revealed. But the information kind of confused him. Why would evolving laterally require a double of the total EXP needed to advance to the next Racial Tier¡­ Tsar pondered it for a little while before he realized why that would be. It was because if he evolved Laterally, he could stay as a G Tier which would mean that he could fairly easily level up again. Every time he Evolved, he would get +10 to all of his stats, then at a minimum +5 for the five Racial levels, not to mention whatever the bonus stat points would be for each Species he evolved into along with potential racial skills. It was the potential to gain far more stat points than your Tier would suggest. Once he figured that out Tsar was torn between evolving vertically or laterally. He had the opportunity to gain a huge number of stats. But evolving Laterally would consume all of his banked EXP meaning he would need to collect at a minimum another 500 EXP to reach the next Tier evolution threshold again. And to be completely honest Tsar wasn¡¯t all that concerned about getting to be the most powerful entity he could be on what was essentially his first run through a life that was going to repeat over and over again. He was essentially a human with the body of a fairly large frog right now and he was missing the social aspect of his humanity. Evolving vertically was the only way that he could potentially rejoin a civilized society and with the amount of banked EXP he had, he could probably just fly through a whole Tier, maybe two. He knew that at a minimum he needed to be able to evolve into a B+ tier to become a naturally sapient species¡­ After a few minutes of internal debate Tsar finally decided to ignore lateral evolutions until he reached B+ Tier and could join society. At that point he could just do the whole lateral evolution through the different species of natural Sapient creatures and grow stupidly powerful there. So, he was going to ignore the option for now. So, he brought up his evolution options and was surprised to find a ton of them. Not all of them were even frog related but the top four options were the most interesting. [Angel Frog(E+)], [Mystic Hopper(E+)], [War-Toad(E+)], and [Poison Darter(E+)]. He didn¡¯t know if skipping an entire Tier was a good thing, but it could potentially get him into the world of people again quicker. Tsar wished he could tell what the different species actually were and what their strengths and weaknesses were. He didn¡¯t like Toads so that meant War-Toad was out right off the bat. Poison Darter seemed like it would be a great one that would up his combat potential if it indeed had poison, but if it was just poisonous that meant that he¡¯d have to let things bite him or eat parts of his body. Angel Frog was a bit of an outlier, he had no clue what it could potentially do based on the name. Would it give him wings? Make him look pretty? He didn¡¯t know. Mystic Hopper made him think of magic. Magic was something that Tsar really wanted. After an admittedly short internal debate Tsar decided to go with Mystic Hopper. The potential for there to be magic or magical skills waiting for him in that line of evolution was too much for his inner nerd to ignore. So, he quickly snugged himself into a safe spot in the branches of the tree he was in and pressed confirm. Like the first time he¡¯d evolved Tsar immediately blacked out the second he pressed confirm. The moment he came too, he nearly fell out of the tree he was in because he¡¯d gotten a lot larger. He was disoriented from the sudden near falling experience. Examining his physical changes and based off the size of the hippos. Assuming he had the size scales right, he¡¯d grown from a frog that would have been admittedly huge back on earth, probably around the size of a house cat. To what he was now as a Mystic Hopper, a frog that was probably the size of a mid-sized dog, like he probably weighed nearly sixty pounds now. After shaking his head for a moment to dispel the disorientation of suddenly becoming much larger. And pointedly ignoring the fact that he had somehow just gained a lot of mass out of seemingly thin air, Tsar took a look at his notifications which were blaring for attention.
Congratulations You have evolved into a Mystic Hopper(E+). Evolution Bonus: +10 to all unlocked stats. Racial Bonuses: Gain Skill [Sense Mana lvl.1], Gain Skill [Thaumic Digestion lvl.1] Banked EXP applied to Race Level
Congratulations You have reached race level 10 Attribute points have been allotted. You now qualify for a new class.
Congratulations You have skipped an entire Tier in your evolutionary tree gaining you the Title: [Skipper] Effect: +1 to all unlocked attributes
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Curious, Tsar mentally tapped the New Class to see what it was. The title was good and all, more stats were more stats. And he could check out his new skills later. The class was a big deal though. At least for him. Classes were what was going to determine his build after all.
Shaman Requirements Met: Has interacted with many spirits or souls and remained sane. Has the [Savage] Title. Has lived as a primitive without access to fire or clean water. Has the Willpower Stat Unlocked. Has the Soul stat Unlocked. Has a NAME. Has experienced Death. Has partaken of the flesh of relatives. Description: A Shaman gains +5 Wis, +5 Int, and +5 Will per class level gained. Gains access to the Shaman skill tree. Gains the skills [Bind Spirit lvl.1] [Create Totem lvl.1] and [Commune With Spirit lvl.1] Accept Class Y/N?
Tsar didn¡¯t even need to think about it. He took the class immediately. Shamans were a magical class in every game he¡¯d ever played, most of the time they were some form of support class, but magic was magic. Also, the requirements for this class were pretty insane, just the [Savage] title alone meant that the class was basically impossible to get normally. Let alone the fact that you needed two different, normally locked stats¡­ Tsar wouldn¡¯t be surprised if he would end up being the sole living person in the world with the Shaman Class. Which was confirmed the moment he took the class as another notification popped up in his vision.
Congratulations You are the strongest living Shaman in the world. Title awarded [Shaman King] Effects: Gain skill [Create Talisman lvl.1]
Tsar was pretty happy about his whole new class and the new skills. That was until he looked at his stat sheet and remembered that Classes add to the total EXP needed to level his race. It was a significant increase.
Name: Tsar Bomba Race: Mystic Hopper(E+) Race Level: 10 EXP 0/1240 Titles: [Self Named] [Savage] [Skipper] [Shaman King] [Lesser Tactician] Classes: Occultist(lvl.1) Shaman(lvl.1) 0 banked EXP Death Counter 32
Options Menu¡­
[Sp 300/335] 0.55sph Resource Pools [Hp 310/310] 6.75hph [Mp285/720]14.95mph
Primary Attributes Strength: 67 Dexterity: 62 Constitution: 67 Toughness: 62 Vitality: 62 Intelligence: 82 Wisdom: 82 Perception: 86 Charisma: 83 Secondary Attributes Willpower: 276 MP Regen: 62(144) MP Capacity: 62(144) Soul: 62 Lifespan: 66 HP Regen: 62 Aura: 62 See next page¡­ 1 of ???
Skills Mind of the Occultist lvl.N/A Auto Translate lvl.N/A Perpetual Rebirth lvl.10 Analyze lvl.10 Zen Meditation lvl.10 Mimicry lvl.10 Soul Vault lvl.10 Swimming lvl.5 Stealth lvl.5 Enhanced Five Senses lvl.5 Utility Tongue lvl.5 Jumping lvl.5 Singing lvl.5 Decoy lvl.1 Find Hidden Things lvl.1 Bind Spirit lvl.1 Create Totem lvl.1 Commune With Spirit lvl.1 Create Talisman lvl.1 Sense Mana lvl.1 Thaumic Digestion lvl.1 Spells N/A
Attunement Slots OOOO OOOO OOOO OOOO
Equipment Slots OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO
BloodLine: Soul Well 55 [Blank] [Mundane Souls] +0.55 per hour to all resource pools
The fact that Shaman had added a thousand EXP to the requirements for leveling his race showed that Occultist was a particularly special class in that it did not increase the requirements at all. Still, he couldn¡¯t complain all that much, he¡¯d gotten so much stronger over the past week of his life he didn¡¯t even know what to compare it to. For all he knew his stats were abysmal compared to other peoples. His analysis skill allowed him to see the five highest stats of his targets, and the hippos had all had stats that still doubled his own. Not willpower of course, that particular stat seemed pretty useless though and he had no clue what it actually did. Now it was time to check out his new skill descriptions. The feature on his stat page ¡°Attunement Slots¡± was odd. It looked like he had 16 slots, but he didn¡¯t know how to use them or what they even did. Equipment slots was sitting at 32 slots which seemed pretty damn excessive.
Bind Spirit lvl.1 Cast on target spirit within twenty feet. Cost = Targets Resources pools 2x Effect: Binds spirit to Shaman, Totem, or Talisman. If bound to the Shaman, spirit takes up 1 attunement slot.
Create Totem lvl.1 Cast on target worked object of at least 6x6 inches in size. Cost = variable based on size, quality, rarity, and type of totem created. Totem Types available: Nurture, Ward, Healing Effects: Creates a Totem of selected type Totems may have spirits bound to them.
Create Talisman lvl.1 Cast on target worked item weighing less than 1lbs. Cost = variable based on size, quality, rarity, and type of Talisman created. Talisman Types available: Spirit holding, Shield, Ward. Effects: Creates a Talisman of the selected type. Each Talisman worn takes up 1 Equipment Slot. Talismans may have spirits bound to them.
Commune With Spirit lvl.1 Cast on target Friendly or Bound Spirit. Cost = 100 Mph/between Shaman and spirit. Effects: Allows the Shaman to commune with target spirit and learn what it knows, and learn its skills.
Sense Mana lvl.1 This is a passive/active skill. Utilizing your senses, sense the presence of mana.
Thaumic Digestion lvl.1 Use this skill to rapidly Digest anything eaten. Even mana. Cost = 10 Mph Effect: Drastically increase SP or MP regen when consuming food depending on what is eaten.
So, all in all Tsar could bind 16 spirits to himself for unknown effects. And he could potentially create up to 32 bound spirit talismans. Though binding spirits to the talismans was not necessary for them to function. The main issue with the talismans and totems at the moment was actually the fact that he was a frog and the skills specified Worked materials. He could also sense mana, and more rapidly regenerate his Sp by spending mana. That last one could definitely be useful. Tsar had no idea where he would find spirits, but he¡¯d figure it eventually. Commune with spirt seemed like an awesome way to learn new skills. Now it was time to sense some mana! But first he needed to head away from this place. He was pretty darn sure that the hippos would no longer tolerate his presence now that he wasn¡¯t a life-mote frog. So, Tsar stealthily made his way away from the herd, avoiding caiman, and cautiously slipping through reeds and underbrush. As he moved, he looked up at the canopy above and wished that he could actually see the sky. The ever-present gloominess of the swamp was kind of annoying. Once he¡¯d made it to a more deserted area of the swamp and felt that he was as safe as he was not going to be attacked by some random critter Tsar started to focus on trying to sense mana. Sensing mana was weird. Tsar got a vague feeling all around himself as he concentrated. It was¡­ impossible to describe. The best way he could put it was that he could ¡®feel the vibes¡¯. Even though he didn¡¯t really feel like he was getting anywhere with sensing the mana he kept at it for a long while. Then he ¡®sensed¡¯ a particularly strong vibe in one direction, and he got curious, so he started slowly making his way towards the feeling. It wasn¡¯t far away at all. Just behind a bush only a few feet away actually. As he circled it, he wasn¡¯t sure he was sensing because he couldn¡¯t see anything out of place. Focusing on the area he made a sweep with his eyes trying to see what was causing the feeling but there was nothing there. After several minutes of just staring at the area he finally saw what was causing the feeling to come into focus. It appeared out of thin air. A small orb of incredibly dim blue light that his eyes had slid over a dozen times already, the only reason he noticed the orb of light at all was because it was starting to get dark out. He used to analyze on it and found something strange.
Wisp (Spirit) 25 mana
That was it. The wisp didn¡¯t have any stats which seemed weird. But at least Tsar had found a spirit. He could test his Bind Spirit skill now. Looking at the wisp Tsar activated the skill, and instantly felt his mana pool go down by fifty points. That felt strange. But what was even more strange was what it felt like to be bound to a spirit. It was like he suddenly had a new appendage. He could easily control the Wisp the same way he could move his arms and legs. It was very interesting. He used Analyze on the Wisp again to see if anything had changed because of the Binding. Something had definitely changed. It had stats now. But only two.
Wisp (Spirit) [Bound] [Mp75/720] 14.95mph MP Capacity: 144 MP Regen: 144
Flicking back and forth between his stat page and the Wisps information Tsar rapidly realized something. For some reason Binding it had given it his stats but didn¡¯t actually take away his stats. It was like the Wisp had been rewritten with his stat points as the base, but only those related to mana capacity and mana regen. The second thing he noticed was that one of his attunement slots was an I now instead of an O. The third thing he noticed was that the Wisp also benefited from his Soul Well. And the final thing he noticed was that the Wisp was not counted as any Race Tier of creature. It just was. He had no clue what that meant, but he figured that it simply meant that it did not have a soul. He would kill to find a library filled with all the answers to the questions he had compiled about this world so far. ¡°Well Well Well, that¡¯s not something you see every day now, is it?¡± A voice said from behind Tsar. Tsar absolutely did not freak out. He didn¡¯t panic. And he absolutely did not jump fifteen feet in the air while ejecting the rest of the Tadpole corpses from his inventory and activating Decoy. He also did not then land atop the pile of corpses and flail around for a few moments while some old naked guy was laughing his ass off at the display. Nope, didn¡¯t happen. What really happened is that Tsar nonchalantly turned around and beheld a sight that, while admittedly was about to become common place in his life, he very much regretted seeing. It was an old looking naked man with long silver hair that was all matted and clumped. His face was utterly devoid of hair leaving his perfectly sculpted face for everyone to see. He was smiling a radiant white smile as his eyes seemed to take in the entire world and beyond as he looked down at Tsar. Even though the man looked old he looked old the same way as Captain Yamamoto from one of his old favorite animes. The guy was totally ripped. When the old guy finally stopped laughing, he gasped in a great lungful of air and gave Tsar a little Bow. ¡°My apologies little one. It¡¯s not every day that one gets to see a creature of the Feedoheem on the material plane. Much less one that has a Class I¡¯ve never even heard of. Meaning that you are probably sapient! Oh my, where are my manners? I¡¯ve yet to introduce myself. I am Radgar, Hermit Druid, and Guardian of Iggy. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.¡± The old man said as he gave another bow. Tsar didn¡¯t really know how to react. He didn¡¯t really have the vocal cords to be able to speak with the old man, so he quickly busied himself with gathering up a bunch of Tadpole corpses that someone had left all over the place here. Once he¡¯d finished collecting the corpses Tsar looked back up at the old man who was examining him with a very interested expression on his face. Tsar tried his best to for some words. To try and communicate with the old man. His first couple of attempts ended in him making a couple of chirping sounds that were quite embarrassing. The old man just stood there politely, seeming like he was giving Tsar time to piece together a response. After nearly a dozen failed attempts, Tsar finally got it right! It was crude sounding when he first got out the word ¡®Hello¡¯ but then a notification decided to show up halfway through and suddenly he was able to speak. Though his voice was kind of strange to his own ears. ¡°Hello Radgar, my name is Tsar Bomba.¡± Chapter 3 Making friends. ¡°Hello Radgar, my name is Tsar Bomba.¡± Tsar finally managed to get out. ¡°My goodness. Did you just figure out the Mimic Speech skill? That¡¯s amazing! What a wonderful little hopper you are. It is most certainly a pleasure to meet you Tsar Bomba. Did you just recently evolve? What were you before? How did you get here?¡± Radgar sped up as he asked his questions seemingly bubbling with excitement before he suddenly paused, ¡°I apologize yet again little one. You see, I am a hermit, so I rarely meet people that don¡¯t just annoy me. My only company out here is Iggy. Which I am not complaining about, but sometimes it is nice to talk to someone who is not so connected to you¡­ You know what I mean?¡± Tsar nodded he could understand the sentiment. ¡°Well¡­ To answer your questions, I did evolve just recently. I was a Life-Mote Frog. And I suppose I was born here? Or somewhere around here at least.¡± Tsar said, ¡°And I can understand wanting someone to talk to. Who is this Iggy?¡± ¡°Iggy is my tree! You know a Druid is no good without his or her tree. And Iggy is the best tree. Meaning that my shortcomings are mitigated somewhat by her. I feel like I¡¯m dragging her down sometimes¡­¡± Radgar said his shoulders slumping slightly. Then he was back, ¡°But I shouldn¡¯t dwell on things, at least that¡¯s what she always tells me. Anyways, would you like to accompany me around the swamp? I have business to attend to, gotta make sure this place doesn¡¯t get too rowdy if you know what I mean. Although this spot does look like a nice place to hunker down for the night. Even if you don¡¯t want to accompany me it would be quite nice to have some company for the night.¡± Tsar though about it for a few moments. On the one hand this old man was kind of weird. On the other hand, was being alone again, and having another person around to watch his back would be nice out here in this dangerous swamp. So, accepting Radgar¡¯s invitation to follow him around seemed pretty good. ¡°Well, I don¡¯t really have anything to do besides trying to survive out here. So, getting to hang out with you and talk to someone seems pretty nice. I will gladly accompany you.¡± Tsar spoke ¡°Quite the vocabulary there for someone who was unable to speak only a minutes ago.¡± Radgar said with a chuckle, ¡°You are more than meets the eye. Well, most eyes. My eyes see quite a bit more than most.¡± With that Radgar settled down into a cross legged position in the middle of the little dry patch of ground they were on. Soon Tsar started asking the old man questions. Careful to avoid asking directly about things like hidden or locked stats. Honestly, he just tried to get Radgar to teach him about the world. And Radgar was happy to just talk his ear off, so Tsar spent the night learning a whole bunch of new things. He did end up falling asleep at some point, but it had to have been very late. When Tsar awoke, he felt well rested and ready for the day. Across from him was Radgar still sitting in exactly the same position he¡¯d been where Tsar had fallen asleep. His eyes still open as he seemed to stare into something. Just as Tsar started to move Radgar smiled and turned his gaze towards him. ¡°I hope you slept well. We¡¯ve got a busy day ahead of us. Yes busy, busy. Oh! Before I forget.¡± Radgar¡¯s eyes took on a far away look for a few moments before suddenly a little blue box appeared in Tsar¡¯s vision.
Radgar Penderghast has invited you to join his party. Accept Y/N
Tsar accepted it then nearly gasped when a little box populated in his vision showing Radgar¡¯s Level, class, and resource pools. The man was race level 237! His classes, he had two of them, were Hermit Druid of the World Tree lvl 190, and Berserker Guardian of the World Tree lvl 98. And beside Radgar¡¯s name was a little S+. Radgar¡¯s Resource pools were all in the hundreds of thousands. It was absolutely stunning to realize that this old man who was actually very nice was an absolute beast of a man. He could probably take on armies single handedly. ¡°Damn I am glad that I didn¡¯t try to fight you.¡± Tsar muttered, mostly to himself. ¡°It would have been fairly amusing if you had. I wouldn¡¯t have hurt you, but it certainly would have told me a lot about you. In fact, we should probably spar a bit when we get back to Iggy. It would do wonders for your skills and give me something to do besides lounge about all day. Though we may need to get you leveled up a bit more and possibly evolved into something with hands.¡± Radgar replied, ¡°Our business over the next few days will probably see to that though. It¡¯s been years since the last time I cleaned out the swamp. There¡¯s a lot to do.¡± And so, Tsar followed Radgar through the swap throughout the day. Only fifteen minutes after they had started their moving throughout the swamp though Tsar learned what Radgar had meant about ¡®cleaning out the swamp¡¯. What the man really meant was that he tracked down anything that was B Tier or higher and slaughtered it. Because Tsar was in a party with Radgar he was gaining Exp from the kills, and souls. His level shot through the roof after only a few hours he was already at level 20 with the little box telling him that he could evolve again. He told Radgar and asked if he should wait until they stopped for the night or do it right then and there. ¡°I actually had a thought as we started off today¡± Radgar said, ¡°If you will trust me on this. Are you familiar with the concept of Lateral Evolution?¡± Tsar nodded ¡°Well, there are, an admittedly trash talked, type of people in civilized society called Grinders. Mainly because they have or are trying to get the [Grinder] title. It is acquired by laterally evolving five times. It is a particularly desirable title due to the fact that it is one of the few ways known to reduce the amount of EXP classes add to your race requirements for leveling. Since it has been so long since I last cleaned out the swamp, it would probably be in your best interest to get the title before you progress up the Tiers. I only really suggest this because the most fearsome enemy I have ever fought was a B+ race Tier individual who was a Grinder. At the time I was S Tier, and he still gave me a run for my money.¡± Radgar elaborated. ¡°That sounds fine by me. That would be like 300 extra stat points and a bunch of new skills.¡± Tsar responded, ¡°But why would you help me do that?¡± ¡°Its not as if it will be a bother. You will be getting a whole lot more out of my cleaning the swamp than I will at all. Creatures below S tier don¡¯t even provide me with more than 1 EXP anymore. It won¡¯t really take us any longer and I¡¯m going to be clearing out the swamp anyway. So why not eek out some decent benefits for a friend?¡± Radgar spoke as if everything he were saying was just common sense. ¡°Why do clear out the swamp?¡± Tsar asked, ¡°If lower Tier creatures don¡¯t give you any EXP wouldn¡¯t it be better to let them be until they hit S Tier?¡± Radgar chuckled at that. ¡°It has been a long time since I was truly interested in advancing myself. I actually do this because the edges of the swamp are a place where young low leveled adventurers tend to cut their teeth on some real-life monster hunting. By keeping the average Tier down here in the middle of the swamp it ensures that those younglings don¡¯t run into anything too powerful for them to handle. It¡¯s sort of¡­ my way of giving back without them ever realizing I do it.¡± Radgar spoke that last bit with a slight droop in his shoulders. A distant look coming over his eyes. After that the day went by and Tsar had gained just enough EXP to Laterally Evolve. Which was insane. Not to mention that he had gained a whole new level of respect for Radgar. The man didn¡¯t even use skills to kill the monsters they encountered, he literally just stuck a finger through their skulls before they could so much as blink, and it was done. Tsar collected the monsters¡¯ corpses and their souls. When they stopped for the night Tsar plopped down across from the man and opened his Evolution options. The highest tier one he could get to was a C+ Tier creature called a Frogglin. But he still had the options he had decided to skip when he¡¯d chosen Mystic Hopper. So, he asked Radgar if he knew what they were. ¡°Well, that is an interesting lineup¡­ The Poison Darter is smaller than you currently are by a small amount. Their bodies produce a toxic poison that can be incredibly potent when it gets to higher levels. War-Toad is very interesting because it is a creature not native to this plane, it is native to the infernal plane, and I am sad to say that I don¡¯t anything other than that about them. Angel Frogs are native to the celestial planes. Known as delicacies in some circles. Mystic Hoppers are native to the Feedoheem planes. Which is what caught my eye when I first spotted you. I find it rather odd that you have options outside of the Material Planes normal strata.¡± Radgar explained. And because Tsar didn¡¯t want to be a toad for any longer than he had to be, he chose War-Toad first. He passed out like always when he evolved and woke up a few moments later with a far more robust feeling body.
Congratulations You have evolved laterally into a War-Toad(E+). Evolution Bonus: +10 to all unlocked stats. Racial Bonuses: Gain Skill [Rush lvl1], [Bottomless Stomach lvl.N/A]
Rush lvl.1 Use this skill to instantly accelerate yourself in direction you are facing. Cost = 20 Sp
Bottomless Stomach lvl.N/A This skill allows you to consume an unlimited quantity of food to serve as a stockpile for Sp regeneration.
Tsar didn¡¯t even bother with looking at his stat page. All of his stats would have gone up by 40 points since the last time he¡¯d seen it, with the exception of Willpower which would have gone up by 140. His willpower stat was insane, but he didn¡¯t know what it did yet. And he wasn¡¯t about to ask Radgar for fear of alerting him that he was even more different than the man already knew he was. Now that that was done, Tsar went about moving his Wisp around, then he remembered his skill Commune With Spirit. But before he used it, he looked over to Radgar who was sitting there silently observing Tsar¡¯s antics with his Wisp. ¡°What can you tell me about spirits?¡± Tsar asked ¡°Well, I can¡¯t tell you much actually. Spirits are¡­ for lack of better words. A play script. They are not really alive. Though some are incredibly powerful, they exist and are born all the time, but if you observe them, they just go about a singular pattern movements and actions taken over and over unless interrupted. Different spirits react differently when interrupted, but every spirit of the same type will react the same. Wisps for example will attempt to flee by becoming invisible for a short while before reappearing. Others react violently. When killed or destroyed their bodies will coalesce into a Spirit Core of their Type. The study of Spirits is its own entire field and that¡¯s about all I really know.¡± Radgar spoke ¡°Well, I am about to use one of my Shaman skills on this Wisp. I don¡¯t know what will happen, so I wanted to warn you first.¡± ¡°I appreciate the warning.¡± Tsar brought the wisp down onto his head and activated Commune With Spirit. He was presented with two options when he activated the skill. [See Memories] and [Learn Skills]. He mentally tapped Learn skills. After clicking the option Tsar suddenly found himself in what he could only describe as a fever dream state. He knew he could stop it at any time, but he also knew that if he did he wouldn¡¯t gain anything from it if he did. Hours later Tsar finally finished with his Commune With Spirit and he was mighty pleased, but also displeased with the results.
Congratulations You have successfully communed with your bound spirit and learned the following skills. [Mana Siphon], [Mana Bullet], and [Mana Transfer]
Mana Siphon lvl.1 This is a passive skill that increases mana regen rate Effect: 50% of mana pool is dedicated to the Siphon, +10% Mp Regen rate
Mana Bullet lvl.1 Fires a condensed projectile of pure mana up to 20 yards dealing damage equal to cost minus resistances. Cost = 20-100 Mp
Mana Transfer lvl.1 Can transfer mana between bound spirits and Shaman at a rate of 50 to 1 transfer efficiency.
The Mana Siphon skill had cost him half of his mana pool for a measly 10% increase in regeneration! He couldn¡¯t turn it off because it was passive. Hopefully the skill would get better as it leveled up. Unlike a lot of other skills, it didn¡¯t tell him how it would progress. Luckily, he only had a couple of skills that actually used mana, and they weren¡¯t very expensive. Hopefully it would level up fast. Mana transfer was practically useless as it was, but hopefully that would change as it leveled up. Then he could use his Spirits as basically backup mana pools. Mana bullet was practically a spell! Though he wasn¡¯t sure what the difference between a spell and a skill was, he now had a ranged damage dealing skill. After testing out his new skills Tsar settled in to sleep for the night. Five days and four Lateral evolutions later, Tsar was incredibly pleased with himself. He was a freaking beast now! Stat wise at least. His lowest stats now sat at 452 while willpower was up to a staggering 1,766. Plus, he was up to 245 souls in his Soul Well. Meaning an additional 2.45 regen per hour in all of his resources. His skill levels had not made any progress and aside from gaining two new skills from the lateral evolutions he hadn¡¯t gained any others.
Generate Poison lvl.1 Secrete a mild poison from a selected area of your body. Cost = 1SP per ounce
Rapid Healing lvl.1 Heal yourself using your bodies energy stores. Cost = 50Sp per 1Hp restored
But the real kicker was the title. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Congratulations You have evolved laterally five times. For showing your dedication to maximizing your existence you have been awarded the Title: [Grinder] Effects: Reduce the Exp increase to Race level caused by classes by 10%
In total Tsar had evolved 6 times in the past five days 7 if you count his initial evolution into a mystic hopper. His five lateral evolutions, and then he¡¯d evolved again into a race called Mystic Frogglin(C+). His Mystic Frogglin body was bipedal and stood about four and a half feet tall. His eyes were quite large for his head, his hands, complete with opposable thumbs were slightly more elongated and wider than a human of the same size would be. His skin was a dark green with swirling patterns of blue throughout it. His mouth was absurdly wide for the size of his head. His back was slightly hunched giving him a goblinesk look. He had just completed his evolution and was admiring what it felt like to walk again when Radgar interrupted his exploration of self. ¡°Well with that all done we had best get back to Iggy. We¡¯ve taken care of all the B through A Tiers in my range, and it¡¯ll be good to get back home. I¡¯m sure Iggy will love you.¡± Radgar spoke before turning in a seemingly random direction and starting to walk. Tsar followed along, amazed at how easily he could move and far he could leap with seemingly no effort now. Tsar¡¯s main issue with becoming so strong so fast was that he wasn¡¯t accustomed to his own strength at all now. He would jump, intending to land on a root or dry patch of ground a few feet away and end up overshooting his target by dozens of feet. Or he would trip and overcorrect with so much force that he sent himself flying. Radgar would laugh at his antics more often than not but in such a way that Tsar always felt it was good natured. Radgar was slightly confusing to him. Over the past week of getting to know the man Tsar had found him to be a genuinely caring person. He talked fondly of friends long past and his days as an adventurer. He seemed to always be genuinely happy to teach Tsar anything he asked about. Radgar seemed like the kind of guy who would be at every social gathering telling ridiculous stories about his myriad of bone head friends. Radgar being a hermit didn¡¯t make sense to Tsar at all. They moved through the swamp for several hours before they suddenly came upon a dry clearing. Tsar was actually pretty sure that they were exiting the swamp entirely as they approached the edge of the first area of real dry land he¡¯d seen since he¡¯d been in this world. That was when he saw Iggy. Tsar had been imagining a giant tree like a redwood or something along those lines. What saw when he entered the clearing was a tree that seemed to reach all the way into the heavens and beyond. It was a tree that had decided it wanted to be a mountain. The base of its trunk had to be several miles in diameter. The first branches on the massive thing didn¡¯t start until probably ten thousand feet up. He could see clouds under the canopy! Tsar was struck by a complete sense of awe as he gazed upon the massive tree in the distance. The only thing he could think to call it was the World Tree. ¡°Iggy I¡¯m home!¡± Radgar shouted beside him. ¡°I can see that! And I see you have brought a friend. Introduce us!¡± a voice that sounded rather feminine but resonated with other worldly power responded. ¡°Oh right. Tsar, this is my beautiful and beloved companion, Iggy.¡± Radgar gestured to the ginormous tree, ¡°Iggy, this is Tsar, Tsar Bomba the Mystic Frogglin currently.¡± ¡°It is a pleasure to meet you Tsar. Has Radgar been treating you well?¡± Iggy¡¯s voice resounded. ¡°It is a pleasure to meet you too. And I probably owe Radgar a debt that can never be repaid at this point. So, I¡¯d say he has treated me extremely well.¡± ¡°Nonsense! You owe me nothing. If you feel like you, do you can help me out by cleaning up all the clutter inside the house. Been meaning to get rid of a bunch of old junk. You have that seemingly infinite storage skill, so you can clear it all out for me.¡± ¡°Ah it would be good to free up all that space. My fallen twigs and pruning¡¯s are taking up too much room at this point as well. If you wouldn¡¯t mind of course! As my dearest said he does not consider you to be indebted to us, so the choice is up to you.¡± Iggy said. ¡°I¡¯ll help out wherever I can.¡± Tsar replied. With the greetings out of the way, Radgar led Tsar on a run across the grassy meadow surrounding Iggy¡¯s trunk. It was astonishing how much ground one could cover when they had superhuman strength and a flat plane to run on. They arrived at the base of Iggy¡¯s trunk within minutes. Once there Radgar led Tsar to a doorway that looked like it had grown from the tree itself. Which it probably had. ¡°I am going to go wash up real quick. Iggy, if you would be so kind as to guide Tsar to the storage area that would be wonderful.¡± Radgar said as he led the way through a hallway that was lit by some unknown means. ¡°Not a problem, please take the first right turn you see Tsar. The ¡®junk room¡¯ will be down that hall to your left.¡± Iggy spoke. Tsar followed Iggy¡¯s instructions as Radgar moved down a different path. When he reached the so called ¡®junk room¡¯ he instantly wanted to turn around and leave it all where it was. It wasn¡¯t junk at all. It looked like a treasure hoard. Granted a treasure hoard with a lot of rusted and mostly broken equipment, but there were also piles of coins of various denominations, stacks of books and piles of what looked like staffs, axes, daggers, swords, bows, and every other sort of weapon that one could imagine. ¡°Iggy¡­ are you sure I can take this stuff?¡± he asked quietly. ¡°You may see treasures here young one¡­ But what Radgar sees when he walks into this room is many lifetimes worth of failure, regrets, and despair. It would be a blessing to both of us if you could reduce this pile of junk even by a half.¡± Iggy spoke softly but her voice carried more than just words, ¡°You know that he has the Hermit Druid class, right?¡± Tsar nodded. ¡°The ¡®hermit¡¯ modifier on a class comes with two things¡­ A Boon and a Curse. The Boon is one of strength and power, the Curse¡­ The Curse is that whenever a Hermit is near or around naturally Sapient creatures, humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins¡­ you get the picture. Whenever a hermit is around those beings, they become agitated, annoyed, and quick to anger. When you combine that with his second class¡­ It means that being around people will often instantly send him into a blood rage. All of this ¡®junk¡¯ is a result of adventurers wandering too close, or purposefully seeking us out, and Radgar going into an uncontrollable rage. At first, he kept it all as a reminder of why he had to stay here and never wander. But after so many years¡­ it has become a constant burden on his mind.¡± ¡°I thought it was strange that someone like him was a hermit. He¡¯s too caring. Too social. He loves to teach and talk and listen to stories¡­ Why in the world would he have selected those classes?¡± Tsar asked ¡°Not all classes are selected young one. When he planted my seed, he was a ¡®Wandering Druid¡¯. The act of planting my seed forceful evolved his class into a Hermit type. As for his second class¡­ I will allow him to tell you about that if he feels the need. Just know that cleaning this room out will be a boon to us.¡± Iggy went quiet after that. Tsar stood there for a long while. Feeling like a dragon had invited him to try and steal from its hoard. But Iggy¡¯s explanations made him aware that it more like a cleaning the skeletons out of one¡¯s closet. After settling himself Tsar began with collecting everything in the room. It honestly did not take very long his Soul Vault made it as simple as just touching everything in the room. He would examine everything with analyze later, for right now he just wanted to get it all quickly. Maybe an hour later Tsar stood in an empty room. He honestly felt like he should sweep the room out, but he didn¡¯t have a broom. ¡°Thank you young one, you have no idea what it means to have all of this cleaned up. Now if you would like I have a lot of my own mess that I would like for you to clear out. The little twigs that break off in the wind, and my pruning¡¯s. They don¡¯t rot, so at one point they were just cluttering up my beautiful little meadow. I couldn¡¯t have that, so I created a space to put them. But it¡¯s getting quite full at this point, and it would be nice have it cleared out. This is just for my sense of tidiness you don¡¯t have to if you don¡¯t want to.¡± Iggy said. ¡°Lead the way. If I can take care of a problem for you, I feel like I should. It¡¯s not really a bother to help out my friends. Not like I have anything else to do.¡± Tsar spoke Iggy laughed before giving him directions that led to a set of stairs leading downward. At the bottom he entered into a room that was¡­ quite frankly enormous. It was like an industrial warehouse scaled up by a few times. And in it were stacks on stacks of sticks, leaves, branches, and logs as big around as he was tall. ¡°That¡¯s a whole lot of wood.¡± Tsar said as he looked out over the massive piles. He heard Iggy giggle for a moment before hearing her mumble to herself ¡°that¡¯s what she said¡±. Tsar couldn¡¯t believe he¡¯d just heard a ¡®that¡¯s what she said joke¡¯ from a tree the size of a mountain. But he didn¡¯t comment on it. He just went to the first pile and started storing it all. The weird thing about the sticks and logs and all of the piles of wood was that they were all straight. No bends, or knots, the ends were perfectly flat, as if sanded smooth. ¡°Why are these ¡®twigs¡¯ so perfectly straight?¡± he asked. ¡°Oh, I make them straight so that they are easier to store. I have skills that let me manipulate the shape of wood. It doesn¡¯t take much effort and makes everything a little more efficient. Without that I¡¯d need an area many times larger to store everything.¡± Iggy explained. ¡°Oh, do you make sculptures other things like that then?¡± he asked, genuinely curious. ¡°Yes, I do! Would you like to see them? I don¡¯t make them out of this stuff, I grow them on my branches.¡± Iggy¡¯s voice took on an excited tone as she spoke. ¡°I would love to see them.¡± Tsar said. ¡°Excellent, I¡¯ll show them to you in a few hours¡­ Or maybe tomorrow. Radgar says he wants to train you a little bit, so you are not helpless when you leave. He¡¯s almost done getting cleaned up and I doubt he¡¯ll want to wait while I show off.¡± Iggy spoke ¡°Ok, I¡¯ll just keep cleaning up around here until we figure it all out then.¡± With that, Tsar got back to storing everything he could lay his hands on. About twenty minutes later a familiar voice resounded behind him. ¡°Well, it¡¯s looking better in here already!¡± Radgar proclaimed, ¡°And I would like to thank you for cleaning up my clutter. I took a peek in there and was happy to see you got all of it. That¡¯s a load off.¡± Tsar straightened and turned around to find Radgar dressed in comfortable looking brown pants and a white shirt. His long hair neatly brushed back and held in a ponytail that nearly reached his butt. The man had practically transformed. Tsar was stunned by the regal looking man standing before him. ¡°Wow you really clean up well.¡± Tsar commented. Radgar looked around for a moment before glancing down at his clothing. ¡°Ah yes, I don¡¯t see the point in ruining good clothes traipsing about in the swamp. Here is a different matter. I like to be comfortable. Anyway, like I said earlier I would like to train you up a bit. Make sure you know how to handle yourself. If you are interested that is?¡± Radgar spoke ¡°Of course! Lead the way.¡± Tsar said. Excited to get this opportunity. People probably dreamed of getting an old master to teach them skills and the like. This was awesome. ¡°Right this way then.¡± Radgar said as he retreated up the stairs. Tsar was led through a variety of hallways until they finally came to another vast room. Though this one looked like a place where you would train armies. There were obstacle courses rope swings and climbers. The place even had free weights set up like a gym. It was astonishing. ¡°I used to train adventurers here when I first became a hermit. It has fallen into disuse since then. But now we get to put it to use once more!¡± Radgar said, a tinge of excitement in his voice as he withdrew a notebook from his pants pocket. ¡°Now, before we begin. I would like you tell me what you highest stat and your lowest stat is so that I can tailor this experience appropriately.¡± Tsar took a quick glance at his stats before responding. ¡°476 perception and 452 for the lowest ones.¡± He partially lied ¡°Now my boy. What have I done to deserve such distrust? Don¡¯t lie to me, it will only get in the way and make me feel bad. I thought we were friends.¡± Radgar spoke, sounding genuinely hurt. Tsar didn¡¯t know how Radgar knew that he¡¯d lied but somehow, he did. ¡°I¡¯m sorry Radgar¡­. Its just that. My highest stat is weird and useless-¡± he was cut off by Radgar ¡°My boy, there are no useless stats. Every single one of them is important and useful. Even the ones we can¡¯t see and can¡¯t apply regularly are useful. Some even more than the naturally unlocked stats.¡± Radgar said After a moment of internal debate Tsar sighed. ¡°My highest stat is Willpower at 1,766. 452 really is the lowest ones.¡± Tsar said deciding to trust the old man. Radgar¡¯s eyes went wide, and he lowered his hands to his sides. ¡°My dear boy. What happened to you that made you unlock the Willpower stat? And to get it so high?¡± Radgar seemed genuinely shocked and perturbed by this revelation. Tsar remained silent for several moments before coming to a decision. He would tell Radgar his complete background. But first he was going to ask a question. ¡°I will tell you everything¡­ but first I would like to ask why you look so shocked and even disturbed that I have the willpower stat. And what does it do?¡± ¡°The Willpower stat is known as one of the hardest stats to unlock. Not only physically but psychologically. Most individuals break in both body and spirit before they can unlock it. The most reliable method known to unlock that particular stat is to endure 10,000 hours of continual torture. That is why I am upset. Who did such a thing to you? And to the point that it has reached nearly 1800 points no less.¡± Radgar seemed to calm himself for a moment, ¡°As to what the Willpower stat does¡­ It allows one to resist mental influences mostly. Mind magics, Illusions that effect the mind. Things of that nature. But it also helps with pain tolerance, and in doing things. What I mean by ¡®Doing Things¡¯ is fairly abstract. With a high enough Willpower, it is said that someone could alter the very fabric of reality simply by willing it to be so.¡± Tsar took everything Radgar was saying in. It made sense now why the system had decided to charge him so much for naming himself. without the title he¡¯d gained his willpower stat would be pretty much the same as all his other stats. ¡°Ok then. Its story time, as promised.¡± Tsar said as he began explaining how he had come to be in this world. He didn¡¯t leave out any details. Even using Zen Meditation to remember things that were slightly blurry to him. To his surprise Radgar did not interrupt or even ask questions as he told his story to him. After what felt like hours of telling his story, which probably only took about fifteen minutes. Let¡¯s be real here, not a whole lot had actually happened before he met Radgar. But it felt good to confide in someone. ¡°So, you are a transient soul. That explains much. That you had so many souls to trade to the gods was a massive boon. Otherwise, you would probably have either died permanently already or would still be a tadpole swimming around in the swamp¡­ You said that you have pages on pages of unlocked stats that you are unable to understand. But you have found Soul and Aura among them. There are others, there should be at least 21 more that you haven¡¯t found yet. Not that it does much good actually seeing them, the fact that they are unlocked is enough¡­ But you have sixteen attunement slots? I don¡¯t understand that one. Nor the Equipment Slots. Their numbers should be Four and Eight respectively¡­¡± Radgar fell into thought for a few moments seeming to ponder everything then his eyes lit up as if he had solved a riddle, ¡°Ah ha! Your evolutions are the clue. You realize, creatures of the material planes cannot evolve into creature¡¯s native to other realms. That was one thing I found incredibly curious about you. I think that by unlocking all of the stats. You even unlocked the stats of the Three. Celestial, Infernal, and Feedoheem. Essentially splitting your very soul into four complete souls in one. Attunement and Equipment slots are a thing of the soul, not a thing of the body. Even though they seem that way. They just connect to the soul at different levels. Attunement Slots are truly deep soul bound things. Whereas Equipment Slots interact at a surface level.¡± After that they spoke a bit more about the various different stats and what they all did. After nearly an hour of discussions a notification flashed begging Tsar for his attention. Curious as to what it was Tsar brought up the notification.
Congratulations Your Class: Occultist has level up! +5 Int, +5 Wis, +5 Per 100 skill points awarded
Skill points were spendable in his skill trees to unlock more class skills but the minimum cost for them was 1,000 skill points so he¡¯d have to wait for level ten to be able to use them. but he now had a 2% reduction in EXP to level his. Along with the [Grinder] Title that was a total of 12% meaning that his total for race leveling right now 1,230 Exp required per level. He took a peak at his stat page since it had been a while.
Name: Tsar Bomba Race: Mystic Frogglin(C+) Race Level: 0 EXP 153/1,230 Titles: [Self Named] [Savage] [Skipper] [Shaman King] [Grinder] [Lesser Tactician] Classes: Occultist(lvl.2) Shaman(lvl.1) 0 banked EXP Death Counter 32
Options Menu¡­
[Sp 2,285/2,285] 2.45sph Resource Pools [Hp 2,260/2,260] 45.75hph [Mp4,645/4,645]1.58mpm (mp2,322/2,322)1.74mpm
Primary Attributes Intelligence: 477 Wisdom: 477 Perception: 481 Charisma: 473 Strength: 457 Dexterity: 452 Constitution: 457 Toughness: 452 Vitality: 452 Secondary Attributes Willpower: 1,766 MP Regen: 452(924) MP Capacity: 452(924) Soul: 452 Fortitude: 452 Lifespan: 456 HP Regen: 452 Aura: 452 See next page¡­ 1 of ???
Skills Mind of the Occultist lvl.N/A Auto Translate lvl.N/A Bottomless Stomach lvl.N/A Perpetual Rebirth lvl.10 Analyze lvl.10 Zen Meditation lvl.10 Mimicry lvl.10 Soul Vault lvl.10 Swimming lvl.5 Stealth lvl.5 Enhanced Five Senses lvl.5 Utility Tongue lvl.5 Jumping lvl.5 Singing lvl.5 Decoy lvl.1 Find Hidden Things lvl.1 Bind Spirit lvl.1 Create Totem lvl.1 Commune With Spirit lvl.1 Create Talisman lvl.1 Sense Mana lvl.1 Thaumic Digestion lvl.1 Rush lvl.1 Mana Siphon lvl.1 Mana Bullet lvl.1 Mana Transfer lvl.1 Rapid Healing lvl.1 Generate Poison lvl.1 Mimic Speech lvl1 Spells N/A
Attunement Slots I OOO OOOO OOOO OOOO
Equipment Slots OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO
BloodLine: Soul Well 245 [Blank] [Mundane Souls] +2.45 per hour to all resource pools
His mana regeneration had graduated from mana per hour to mana per minute. Still at the rate he regenerated it, it would still take over twenty hours to go from empty to full. If he could kill a couple tens of thousands of creatures to up his soul count, he could get that to regenerate in the per second range. But honestly, he would need a thousand souls per 10 generation per hour. That would be ten thousand just to gain 100 per hour. Which meant that 100,000 souls would equate to around 16 and a half regeneration per minute. Which meant that he¡¯d need to kill or be part of killing 375,000 creatures to get to 1 regen per second. Tsar knew that he would probably get there eventually. But that was actually a rather morbid thought. After their discussion was done Radgar pulled out his little notebook and started flipping through it a bit before he put some marks down on it. ¡°Ok, well at least I have a baseline for your skills and stats now. But I am sad to say we won¡¯t be able to start today, I¡¯m going to need to prepare some things. Since you have such an astonishingly high Willpower stat, I believe that we can jump into getting you some resistance skills, which requires materials. Also, since your classes don¡¯t put any restrictions on weapons use it would be a good idea to get the skills for as many of them as possible. Iggy can help us with that¡­ Yes, I need to prepare. Iggy mentioned something about showing off her creations to you. You might as well go and do that we¡¯ll be starting bright an early tomorrow.¡± Chapter 4 Making Totems As soon as Radgar finished speaking he hurried off into the training room looking like a man on a mission. Tsar stood there for a moment before Iggy interrupted his thoughts. ¡°Would you like to go see my collection now or would you prefer to go back and collect more sticks.¡± She asked. ¡°I would absolutely love to see your collection.¡± Barely a second after he said that he felt a strange sensation and suddenly found himself elsewhere. He blinked and nearly stumbled at the disorienting feeling that Iggy had just somehow moved him. ¡°Ummm¡­¡± Tsar muttered as he nearly stumbled, ¡°Did you just teleport me?¡± ¡°Yup! I can only do it to things inside my area of influence and it requires a lot of mana for bigger things. But you are small and very low leveled, so its not that hard.¡± Iggy spoke happily. Tsar wasn¡¯t sure if that was supposed to be a compliment an insult or a statement of fact. So, he chose to focus on the fact that a mountain sized tree could teleport him around at will, then he decided to stop thinking about it all together and concentrate on the army that was standing before him. It wasn¡¯t a literal army. But an army made entirely of wood. What he was looking at was several hundred acres of flat area covered by statues of people in armor surrounding a titanic dragon made of wood. Everything was so lifelike that he could practically see the battle taking place as the dragon breathed fire across whole battalions of men and women, arrows bouncing off its scaly hide as it tore into those who would dare face its wrath. Tsar walked among the life-sized statues in awe of the detail, each face was different, down to the last little detail. Some had scars, others had pimples! The level of intricacy and detail in the statues defied imagining. They looked so lifelike that Tsar found himself touching them to make sure they weren¡¯t real people. ¡°Iggy¡­ this might be the most amazing thing I¡¯ve ever seen in my lives.¡± Tsar said in wonder as he examined the wooden rendition of fire covering a group of soldiers. Even the fire looked real, as if it should be hot. ¡°Thank you! I spend a lot of time making them. It one of the many ways I pass the time when I get bored.¡± Iggy said. ¡°Well, if you do commissions, I¡¯d love to order a piece or two.¡± Tsar joked. ¡°Sure, what would you like me to make? I¡¯ll have to make it out of the scrap down in storage though otherwise you won¡¯t be able to take it with you.¡± Iggy said excitedly. ¡°I was joking¡­ But it you would like to make a few totems and talismans for me I wouldn¡¯t say no.¡± ¡°What is a Totem? Or a Talisman for that matter?¡± Iggy asked, sounding hopeful. Tsar really didn¡¯t get the level of generosity that these two beings seemed to have. Maybe they were just incredibly bored and super happy to have something new to do and learn? Anyway, Tsar did his best to describe what his concept of a Totem, Totem poles, and Talisman were. Which didn¡¯t take long at all. He also explained that he¡¯d asked for those things because of his Shaman Class, giving her the specifics of the skills. ¡°It sounds like fun. I¡¯ll make some and see how you like them. I already finished the training weapons Radgar asked for, so I¡¯ll fiddle around a bit and see what I come up with.¡± Iggy said it like it was going to be a challenge. But with her artistic mastery Tsar felt like Totem poles and Talismans were something so beneath her abilities that it was practically an insult to even ask her to make them. But she seemed genuinely happy to do it so Tsar decided that he may as well benefit from it. After that Iggy continued teleporting him around to different places where she had similar pieces of art to the dragon battle. One was a ship at sea the crew battling a Kraken that was attempting to pull the ship into the sea. Another was practically a story starting at the beginning you followed a group of five adventurers into a dungeon where they fought all sorts of monsters until they reached the last boss and two of them ended up dying in the battle. Another was of an unnervingly uniform town with creatures that looked like humans but¡­ perfect? And all of them looked identical. It was strange but beautiful none the less. Another showed what was obviously a town of demons, completely the opposite of the other town. Strangely crooked and warped, its denizens all different shapes and sizes. Tsar doubted that he¡¯d seen all that there was to see here. But when Iggy finally teleported him back down to the training room, he was feeling tired. She guided him to a cot that was surprisingly comfortable, and he found himself falling asleep. +++ ¡°How long do you think he will stay?¡± Iggy asked Radgar as he gathered things from storage that had long been waiting for use. ¡°Not very long I don¡¯t think. Probably only a few months, maybe a year. He¡¯s a curious sort, and I think he¡¯ll get bored after the novelty wears off. Add to that that he was once a human and desires to reconnect with society¡­ Yeah he won¡¯t want to stick around with us old farts for too long.¡± Radgar replied. ¡°That¡¯s too bad. He likes my sculptures. And its nice to have someone new to talk to after all this time.¡± ¡°It is indeed. He¡¯s a good sort. Maybe once he reaches the S Tiers, he¡¯ll be able to come back without having to worry about me going frothing mad and accidentally killing him. If he takes my advice and grinds from the B+ Tier races up by the time he reaches my Tier I wouldn¡¯t be able to lay a finger on him.¡± ¡°The advantage of starting at the bottom, I guess. What all are you going to train him in?¡± ¡°Well, all of the weapon¡¯s skills of course. But were gonna aim to give him all the resistances I can come up with¡­ Now don¡¯t give me that look¡­ His Willpower stat is higher than both of ours combined. He can take a little pain, and it will be beyond helpful to him. He doesn¡¯t even realize what Fortitude being unlocked means either, let alone all the others he¡¯s unlocked. The boy¡¯s gonna be unkillable if he ever reaches the O Tiers. Actually, it¡¯s inevitable with that Perpetual Rebirth skill of his. Once he is strong enough, he may even be able to help solve my problem. We could reopen the school. Breathe life into these halls once more. It may be as soon as five hundred years!¡± Ragnar was getting excited as he thought about the prospect of finally being rid of his cursed Berserker class. ¡°It would be wonderful to be able to invest guests into our halls again. Just don¡¯t break him too much. He might run away if you go too hard.¡± ¡°Nah, the kids got balls of adamantine alloy. He¡¯ll stick with it and come out stronger on the other end.¡± Ragnar spoke. +++ Tsar really wished that a training montage in real life was like training montages in books, movies and tv shows. Because the reality of training for twelve hours a day was brutal. Especially resistance training. Resistance training was essentially just allowing yourself to take damage in certain ways. Tsar had drunk poison that left him groaning on the floor for literal days to acquire Poison Resistance. Held his hands over candles to get Heat Resistance, laid down in a tub of acid for Acid Resistance. Been impaled by roots conjured by Radgar to get Wood Magic Resistance. And the final Resistance he had gotten was so far the least fun to get but definitely the most helpful in getting resistances in the first place. Pain Resistance. Radgar claimed that there were literally hundreds of resistance skills that could be obtained. The thing about resistance skills and the reason why most people didn¡¯t try to get tons of them was that they scaled off of a normally Locked stat. Fortitude. Fortitude was the domain of Tank Classes. Or as Radgar called them Defenders. And they usually unlocked the stat after evolving their Class for the first time. Which meant leveling their Class to 100. Resistance Skills didn¡¯t have levels they just increased your resistance to whatever it was by 1% per point of fortitude. It sounds like a totally broken thing but its really not. Your skins baseline resistance to being burnt may be a certain threshold. Increasing that threshold by 4x would still leave your hand melting if you stuck it in the oven. It would just take a little longer. Constitution and Toughness made the resistances even better though. So, reaching a certain point would make you practically immune to mundane fire. Tsar was still pretty far from being able to walk through fire like superman, but that was not an unattainable goal. He just had to level up enough and eventually it would happen. The resistance trainings had taken nearly a month to go through. Radgar had broken out Healing potions and the like to increase the speed, but it still required a lot of self-damage then recovery to get the skills. After he¡¯d finally gotten Pain resistance Tsar had asked for a week off of training so that he could practice a few of his skills at his own pace. Radgar had agreed, saying it was time to move on to weapons training when he was done practicing his skills. Where Tsar now found himself was in the training room firing off Mana Bullet after Mana Bullet. He wasn¡¯t trying to level the skill. No, he was trying to figure out how to control his mana. The skill naturally allowed him to alter the amount of mana he put into it, from 20 to 100. He was playing with that mechanic trying to feel how he was controlling the mana flow. If he could figure out how to control his mana. He may very well be able to teach himself magic. He¡¯d already spent three days draining his mana pool by using the skill over and over. Once he was done emptying out his mana, he would enter into Zen Meditation to review every detail of how it felt to use the skill and try to determine how to use his mana. Five days into his practice he finally figured it out. He managed to overcharge the Mana Bullet skill and dump a little over a thousand mana into it before it fired. Blasting a hole through his target and leaving him drained as he was the skill mana bullet had jumped ship into the Spells category of his stat page. The second that that happened he saw the flash of notifications that wanted his attention.
Congratulations Through hard work and a lot of natural talent you have gained the skill: Mana Control
Mana Control lvl.N/A Take control of your own mana and wield it to fuel magic!
Congratulations By learning to control your own mana, without instruction, and intuitively turning a Skill into a Spell you have been awarded the Title: [Sorcerer] Effects: Gain the Class Sorcerer
Sorcerer Requirements met: Has the [Sorcerer] Title. Description: A Sorcerer gains +5 Cha, +5 Int, and +5 Wis per class level and access to the Sorcerer skill tree. Gains the skills [Magical Savant lvl.N/A] [Hey Mana! Look At Me! lvl.N/A] and [Casting Requirements? Lvl.N/A] Accept Class: Y/N Just kidding you don¡¯t have a choice. You are a Sorcerer lvl.1 now! Note: Being a Sorcerer disqualifies you from obtaining the Wizard Class or its derivatives.
Magical Savant lvl.N/A As a Magical Savant just observing a spell, enchantment, or magical effect is enough for you to be begin piecing together how to do the same thing yourself. Removes the need to maintain a personal grimoire to remember spell formations.
Hey Mana! Look at Me! lvl.N/A Applies Charisma stat to MP Regen stat.
Casting Requirements? Lvl.N/A A Sorcerer can forgo mimetic, mnemonic, and material requirements for spells that require them. Increases mana cost of the spell by 10% per component forgone.
Tsar was flabbergasted. He¡¯d been hoping to learn how to do magic. He hadn¡¯t been planning on getting a new class! This was the first time he¡¯d had something truly forced on him that effected his development. He could no longer take any Wizard derived Classes and the Class had added a whole 10,000 exp to his race level requirements even with a 12% discount that still put his race level exp requirement at 10,030 exp needed per race level. And he had to get up to level 30 to Evolve. He was still race level 0 right now so that meant he now needed 300,900 Exp before he¡¯d be able to Evolve again. Aside from that the Class was damn good. Those last two skills were weirdly named but they were powerful. His charisma stat was now added to his MP regen stat the same as his wisdom stat. giving him an effective 1,412 in the MP regen department. And now he had spells! Well, one spell. But still he was on the road to learning magic. And unlike a wizard he didn¡¯t need to lug around a grimoire to be able to cast spells. But he was going to look through all the stuff he¡¯d gotten from the ¡®junk room¡¯ to see if there were any in there. It would be interesting to see if he could learn magic from them. Tsar still had some mana left, so he decided to try out using Mana Bullet as a spell. Much to his surprise it wasn¡¯t really all that different. The only thing that really changed was how much he could alter it. the minimum mana he could get away with using for it now was 5, but he could also do things like change its shape, rotation, speed. Spells were basically super customizable skills. It was too bad he couldn¡¯t do anything to his stupid Mana Siphon skill. It had reached level five because of all his mana expenditures recently, but nothing about it had changed. No increase in regen rate, nothing.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. Tsar emptied his entire mana pool then retreated to a couple of chairs in the far corner of the training room to look through his Soul Vault. He hadn¡¯t gone through the stuff yet and now he was looking for magic books. He ignored everything that wasn¡¯t a book and simply dumped the books out onto the floor. There were a lot of them. Over five hundred actually. Using analyze on them one by one Tsar realized something about these books. They were all Grimoires. Every single one of them. Most of them were labeled by his skill as ¡®common¡¯ Grimoires. A good portion of them were ¡®rare¡¯. Then there were about ten of them labeled as ¡®Epic¡¯ and seven labeled as ¡®Artifact¡¯. The last three were labeled as ¡®Timeless¡¯. Tsar didn¡¯t really know what the rarity tags meant. But the descriptions on the ¡®Timeless¡¯ Grimoires definitely said it all. Plus, the screens that showed up were gold whereas both the epic and artifact were purple boxes. They were also, curiously enough, the smallest of all the books there. They were pocket book sized, not even really large enough to be called books.
Grimoire of the Explorer (Timeless) This was the personal Grimoire of the great explorer mage Dianna Jones. It contains within it the knowledge of a bygone age and spells that any explorer will find invaluable, Must be bound to an attunement slot to open and read. The Binding is permanent and cannot be undone. Would you like to bind this Grimoire? Y/N Grimoire of Lightning (Timeless) This was the personal Grimoire of the mage Palpatine. It contains within it the knowledge of the darker side of wind magics, Lightning magic. Unleash your rage on those who would oppose you. Must be bound to an attunement slot to open and read. The Binding is permanent and cannot be undone. Would you like to bind this Grimoire? Y/N Grimoire of The Doctor (Timeless) This was the personal Grimoire of the famous/infamous mage The Doctor. It contains within it a vast collection of information gathering, divining, scrying, and escape magics. Must be bound to an attunement slot to open and read. The Binding is permanent and cannot be undone. Would you like to bind this Grimoire? Y/N
To most mages who found these books it would be a difficult decision whether or not to bind them. Attunement Slots could be used for growth items that got stronger with time and adapted to the wielder. But most people only had four slots. Most bound items could be removed willingly but these Grimoires seemed to be special. Tsar had sixteen slots available, and his spirit bindings weren¡¯t permanent, he could dismiss the bond with his spirit at any moment should he chose to. He hesitated for a moment before he confirmed all three bindings at the same time. The moment he bound them Tsar understood why most Wizards needed them. It was like his mind expanded to encompass the contents of the books. The odd thing was that he didn¡¯t actually get a lot of information from this expansion. In fact, he¡¯d pretty much just gotten the information he already knew about the books shoved into his mind, it just felt like there was more room for it. Then he noticed the ever-present system flashing a notification at him again.
Congratulations You have bound the Grimoires of the Explorer, The Doctor, and of Lighting. These are growth Items that have previously grown to such heights that they were labeled as Timeless. Your bond with these items will grow with time and effort. As your bonds grow new effects will emerge based on the individual Grimoire. Bond effect lvl.1: Reading the information contained within will allow instant recall of that information so long as the Grimoire in question in your possession.
¡°Ohhfff, I think I should have warned you about not binding the Timeless Grimoires.¡± Radgar¡¯s voice sounded out behind Tsar causing him to jump. ¡°Why is that?¡± Tsar asked while wondering if he¡¯d just fucked up. ¡°Well, Grimoires have a specific Bond mechanic. It is incredibly useful, in many ways. But the specific way to grow that Bond is by not only reading the entire thing, but by also adding to its contents. Timeless Grimoires have had a great deal of information put into them already, so it takes a long time to read through them, but more importantly it is rather difficult add in new information on their specific subjects when, more than likely, their previous owners had put in almost everything there is to know on the subjects contained. The three who previously owned those Grimoires specifically were masters of their subjects. Also last I checked weren¡¯t you just a Shaman? You need to be a Wizard to take full advantage of those books.¡± Radgar explained. ¡°I just got the Sorcerer Title. So, I am also a Sorcerer now.¡± Tsar said. ¡°Oh my. That one adds a whole lot to the EXP requirements for advancement if I remember correctly. But then having those grimoires is less of an issue. You don¡¯t need the support effects that the bond gives. Certainly, they would be convenient, but as a Sorcerer you kind of cover those bases already. Though at the higher ends of the Bond Levels they start to give you some pretty good stat bonuses if I recall correctly. Most sorcerers tend to use them as diaries. Makes a sorcerers Grimoire useless to anyone but them because the subject matter is their daily lives. Can¡¯t add to that when they have to be dead for you to get ahold of it.¡± ¡°Well, I should be fine then. Just learning the spells that they left behind will be more than enough for me in the short term, and I¡¯ll probably end up learning enough to add to it eventually anyways. Long term growth is better than short term gain.¡± Tsar was just glad that he hadn¡¯t accidentally bound himself to horcruxes or some crazy nonsense like that. ¡°Anyway, the reason I came was to ask you if you¡¯d like to join me in a little excursion to see something Iggy has cooked up. She¡¯s quite excited about it and wanted me to show you the way.¡± Radgar said with a smile. ¡°Alright, only thing I had planned was reading for the next few days anyway.¡± ¡°Perfect. Come along then.¡± With that Radgar guided Tsar through a series of hallways, up a set of stairs and into a room that had a lot of Totems in it. A lot of them. Tsar¡¯s mouth dropped open at the view. They were astonishingly gorgeous pieces of art. Each and every one of them was like looking at a real-life version of the animals¡¯ or monsters¡¯ face that it represented. Yet at the same time they were obviously totems. Some of them were even stacked into poles throughout the room. ¡°Do you like them?¡± Iggy¡¯s voice sounded slightly nervous. ¡°Do I like them? Iggy this is amazing! I never thought you¡¯d make so many.¡± Tsar spoke in awe. ¡°Well, I might have gotten carried away a little bit. These Totems are really fun to make. The Talismans are on the table in the back. I made a lot more of those¡­ I hope you like them.¡± She said excitedly. Tsar walked around admiring the straight up amazing beauty of each and every piece in the room. He used Analyze on one that looked like wolfs head and sucked in a short breath at what he saw.
Wolfs Head Totem [incomplete] Material quality: (Legendary) Workmanship quality: Masterwork Description: A wolfs head totem created by the grandmaster woodworker Iggy, The World Tree Sapling. Can only be completed by a Shaman. Effects: +500% effectiveness when used by a Shaman to create totem. +50 spirit slots to final product.
Tsar started glancing around using analyze on all of the totems in the room. Every single one of them was the same rarity and quality with the same effects. Iggy had made masterworks and was nervous that he wouldn¡¯t like them? He found the table filled with little talismans. There were probably near five hundred of them on the table and analyzed one just to see what would be different about them.
World Tree Talisman [incomplete] Material quality: (Legendary) Workmanship quality: Masterwork Description: A Talisman depicting a World Tree created by the grandmaster woodworker Iggy, The World Tree Sapling. Can only be completed by a Shaman. Effects: +500% effectiveness when used by a Shaman to create talisman. +12 spirit slots to final product.
The only difference was the spirit slot function. With such a small Talisman Tsar was sure he could string together a full 32 of them and wear them all. But that also meant he needed to get cracking on leveling up the skills, it would almost be a crime to use his low-level skills on these things. ¡°Well, are you gonna take them or just stare at them? I want to see what happens once they are complete.¡± Iggy said impatiently. ¡°Well, I¡¯m out of mana right now¡­ So, it¡¯ll have to wait until tomor-¡± Tsar was interrupted by something falling on his which he reflexively caught. ¡°There you go Drink that and make the thing happen.¡± Iggy demanded Tsar drank the potion and felt his mana pool fill up near instantly. Then selected the first Wolfs head Totem he¡¯d analyzed and reached for the create Totem skill. He elected to go with the Nurture Totem and then dumped his entire mana pool into the creation. The Totem glowed golden for a moment after he used the skill before it returned to exactly what it had been before. Notifications blared for his attention, but he ignored them to see what he had just done. He analyzed the Totem, and his eyes went wide.
Wolf Totem of Nurture Material quality: (Legendary) Workmanship quality: Masterwork Description: A wolfs head totem created by the grandmaster woodworker Iggy, The World Tree Sapling. Completed by the Shaman Tsar Bomba. Effects: Increases the rate of plant life growth by 5000% within a radius of fifty feet. 50 spirit slots available. Each Spirit bound to the totem increases its radius of effect by fifty feet. If used as part of a totem pole effects stack up to four times. Requires 1 spirit bound within the next 7 days or the totem will revert to an incomplete state.
If Tsar had a tribe this Totem alone would be a source massive prosperity. Crops grown fifty times quicker within a maximum possible radius of 2,550 feet by itself. He couldn¡¯t even imagine what that would mean for people. And Tsar highly doubted that this was the maximum capability of this totem. It was just the maximum capability he could give it with his current skill level. And the effects of the totem stacked if used as part of a totem pole? A potential radius of over ten thousand feet increasing the growth rate of plant life by 20,000%? This thing would probably be considered a national treasure already though. It was insane. ¡°Now that is quite the creation there. Can¡¯t say I¡¯ve ever seen anything quite like it. Incredible effect. Especially since its stackable. Comparable to some of the national treasures of the old empire I¡¯d say. Iggy what do you think?¡± ¡°I think that I have just experienced a 5000% increase in my growth rate. Which means that that things radius only needs to be touching part of the plant to have its effect¡­ Also, I would appreciate it if you made three more and left these ones for me. We can verify its effects like this.¡± Iggy said ¡°Well, I¡¯m out of mana aga-¡± another five mana potions smacked Tsar on the head, and he scrambled to catch them all. Selecting three more Totems Tsar went through the motions and created three more totems of nurture stacking them atop one another. ¡°I¡¯ll need to bind some spirits to them so that they don¡¯t die on you guys.¡± Tsar said as he placed the last one down. ¡°Will wisps do? I have literally thousands of them floating around in my branches.¡± Iggy said as a wisp appeared out of thin air directly above the totem pole. Tsar downed another potion then got to work binding Wisp after Wisp to the totems until he filled all of their slots. He analyzed the totems again and found that there was nothing he would have to do with them ever again. No maintenance requirements, nothing. It would just work until someone broke the totem. ¡°This is amazing!¡± Iggy practically squealed, ¡°Twenty thousand percent increase to my growth rate Radgar!¡± ¡°It is quite incredible. That stack of wooden animal heads would start wars if people knew about it. I¡¯d suggest keeping your totems a secret as much as possible Tsar. There are people out there that would commit genocide to get ahold these things, once you¡¯ve figured out what the other ones you can make do I¡¯m sure they¡¯ll be just as valuable.¡± Radgar said with a slightly worried expression. ¡°I could only make these with the help of Iggy, material quality and workmanship quality effect the end result. And its probably not by a small amount. I¡¯ll be careful not to reveal this stuff once I head out on an adventure though.¡± Tsar responded. ¡°Yes, that would probably explain how a C+ tier individual just created a legendary artifact that could throw kingdoms into bloody conflict.¡± Radgar chuckled, ¡°Try out one of the talismans next. I must admit that I am curious now.¡± Tsar grabbed the World Tree talisman and downed another mana potion. Then activated Create Talisman and selected Ward as the type. His mana bottomed out again as the talisman glowed before he analyzed it.
World Tree Talisman of Warding Material quality: (Legendary) Workmanship quality: Masterwork Description: A Talisman depicting a World Tree created by the grandmaster woodworker Iggy, The World Tree Sapling. Completed by the Shaman Tsar Bomba. Effects: The wearer of this Talisman is immune to scrying, divination, an identifying type skills lower than the Divine Tier. The scryer, diviner, or identifier will see a false screen that the wearer can create and alter once a day. 12 spirit slots available Each spirit bound to this talisman allows it to resist up to 1 Divine Tier scrying, divining, or Identifying skill per 24 hours. Requires 1 spirit bound within the next 7 days or the talisman will revert to an incomplete state
Radgar whistled as he read the effects of the talisman. And suddenly another wisp was in front of Tsar. He quickly downed a potion and started binding the spirits to the talisman as they appeared. Radgar laughed as Tsar frantically went about it. ¡°You¡¯ll want to wear that at all times. You have no Idea how valuable it is. The information you present to people when they use skills or spells like those can mean the difference between life and death. Now go get some rest. Using that many potions so quickly is not a good idea.¡± Chapter 5 Training Tsar hurriedly collected the totems and talismans throughout the room, dropping them into his Soul Vault before heading back towards the training room. There were notification beginning him to pay attention to them at the moment, but he would look at them when he got back and could concentrate. Arriving back at the training room only took Tsar a few minutes. He went over to his cot and sat on the edge of it for a few moments before he brought up the Notifications that the system had decided he needed to see. His guess was that his Shaman Class had leveled up, or maybe he¡¯d gained a new skill. Drinking a half dozen potions in the course of about twenty minutes was never a good Idea. But at least he hadn¡¯t mixed them. just mana potions alone wouldn¡¯t do much except leave him feeling drained.
Congratulations You have reached Shaman lvl. 10 Stat points have been allocated. Gain 900 skill points.
Congratulations Create Totem has reached lvl.5 New types: [Rest] [Purification] [Defense] [Prosperity]
Congratulations Create Talisman has reached lvl. 3 New types: [Purification] [Rest]
Congratulations Bind Spirit has reached lvl. MAX Cost = Target Spirits Resource pool Effects: Binds target Spirit to Shaman, Totem or Talisman. If bound to the Shaman, Spirit takes up 1 attunement slot. MAX Level Bonus Effect: Enhances the bond created between Totem or Talisman and Spirit. Spirit type will now add effects to Totem or Talisman based on Spirit Type.
¡°Hah! Predictable System.¡± Tsar muttered to himself as he read the first notification. But it was still impressive that his class had gone up by nine levels. That was an extra 45 stat points to int, wis, and will. The new effect of bind spirit was interesting and meant that not only did he have a whole lot more options in creation now, he also would need to experiment with different Spirit Types to see what their effects were on totems and talismans. He still needed one more level to be able to spend the skill points though. The next notifications were anything but what he would have called predictable though.
Congratulations You have pulled of a Feat that not only should be impossible. But you repeated and replicated that Feat five times in one day. Reward: Gain the Title: [Legend] Effects: Base values of Vit, Con, and MP Capacity are changed from 5 to 10 of their respective resources.
Congratulations You have unknowingly, and without asking for a reward, saved the life of a Legendary life form. Potentially changing the destinies and fates of thousands of beings for millennia to come. Reward: Gain the Title: [Hero] Effect: +100 to all Stats.
That was astonishing to say the least. Not only had he just gotten two titles, he had no idea what the second one was for. The effects of the Titles were amazing though, his resource pools had just doubled in size, not to mention that the Hero title had added +100 to all stats. It didn¡¯t even specify unlocked stats. Meaning that if someone got the Title they¡¯d get a whole bunch of benefits that leveling didn¡¯t give them. Then there was one more notification that caught Tsar completely off guard¡­ and pissed him off.
Congratulations You have reached or surpassed the first mortal threshold (500), in all primary stats. Reward (Choose one): [Lifespan modifier increased by 2x], [Regen stat modifier increased from 0.1 to 0.15], [Base value of Vit, Con, and MP Capacity increased from 10 to 15] You have one minute to decide, or the system will randomly assign the reward. Reward not chosen within the specified time frame. Reward selected by system [Lifespan modifier increased by 2X] Note: This choice will carry over between deaths.
¡°God Damnit!¡± Tsar practically screamed. ¡°Of those three choices only the other two are actually worth something! Damnit! And I can¡¯t even get a redo.¡± Tsar wasn¡¯t sure which of the other two he would have chosen. But he was leaning towards the capacity modifiers. He would eventually have so many souls in his Soul Well that regen wouldn¡¯t really matter. Thinking long-term increasing his pools values was the most beneficial. He really wasn¡¯t going to be ignoring notifications anymore. It had cost him dearly today. He was going to have to ask Radgar tomorrow about the thresholds so he could be on guard about them when the time came to select the rewards. Highly irritated Tsar didn¡¯t feel like he could fall asleep at the moment, so he popped open the Lightning Grimoire and started reading. The funny thing about reading a book is you need to know the language it is written in. When he opened the book and started looking at the words written down Tsar was confused at first then it was like it clicked in his mind and suddenly the text was legible. He blinked a few times not understanding what had happened before he remembered his Auto Translate skill. The next thing that Tsar noticed was that certain areas of the text in front of him seemed glow slightly golden, whereas other areas of the text had a dark, miasma, looking glow around them. He really didn¡¯t understand this very much until he read over those different sections and experienced opposite feelings when he read the different colored text. The dark text gave Tsar a feeling of rejection, of wrongness, like there nothing of value to be had from reading them. The golden text gave him a feeling of rightness, of correctness, of value and acceptance. He had no idea what skill he had that might be making this a thing but as he looked at the very first page of the book, he got the feeling that he needed to correct the dark spots. Make them glow golden. In fact, the desire was so intense that Tsar started doing exactly that. As soon as Tsar thought about making alterations to the Grimoire a ballpoint pen with an eraser appeared in his hand. It was such an odd thing to happen that he dropped it, but before it hit the floor, he suddenly found it in his hand again. Deciding to ignore the blatant magical weirdness of what was happening Tsar read over the entire first page. Finding it to be a very rough explanation of electricity and how it worked. Now, Tsar was no electrician, but he had been a programmer and had been known to dabble in DIY PCB building and couple of other things that had required that he have at least a rudimentary grasp of electricity and how it worked. With the assistance of Zen Meditations perfect recall combined with the fact that he could see what areas were wrong made it so it didn¡¯t take Tsar long to correct the first page. The eraser on the pen somehow perfectly erased even the ink and allowed Tsar to erase and rewrite as much as he wanted very easily. He plowed his way through over a dozen pages correcting everything that was wrong with them, and the entirety of the pages were glowing a soft golden color. All the pages that he corrected were mostly about electricity and its basic functions, how it was generated, resistances through materials, stuff like that. There honestly wasn¡¯t anything related to magic in the grimoire yet. Something interesting happened when he got to a section that actually needed more written in it. somehow the available space to write in grew right there as he was writing. Shifting the rest of the information forward like a word document. It was fascinating. But soon he got to the interactions of mana and electricity. And that is where pages started getting really strange. Almost like a checkers board of gold and darkness. Some sentences had just a single word that was dark while the rest of them were golden, or even a single punctuation mark that was dark giving the rest of the sentence a grey pallor. After a few hours of correcting his Grimoire of Lightning, Tsar finally felt like he was ready for sleep to take him. He laid down and fell asleep quite quickly. His mind full of electrical diagrams and charts of Ohms and all that stuff that he¡¯d just reviewed out of both his memories from Earth and the information contained in the grimoire. The next day came too soon, and after a breakfast of monster corpses from his Soul Vault Tsar was back to fixing his Grimoire of lightning. He figured when Radgar wanted to train he¡¯d come find him or Iggy would inform him. So, Tsar continued to fix stuff as he read deeper into the Grimoire. But then Tsar got to a certain point where no matter what he changed the words would not gain that golden glow. After going back and forth over the information Tsar was unsure why things were wrong. Then it hit him. There was nothing in the earlier areas about electromagnetism or fields or anything regarding the more advanced things about electricity. Going back to where it seemed like the Grimoire should have those things Tsar spent a while pouring over his memories with Zen Meditation. Thanking his lucky stars that he had been a huge nerd growing up as a human and had spent countless hours watching the science channel, discovery channel, and surfing random Wiki articles on various things. You know, instead of going out and making friends and goofing around like teens should do. Soon Tsar had looked over all of his memories that related to electricity, electromagnetism, and everything applicable to it that he had ever seen or even heard of. It was an astonishingly large amount of information. But he began to copy it all down into the Grimoire from his memories with a gusto. Tsar wasn¡¯t sure how long he¡¯d been at it. He was fairly certain that he¡¯d added at least a hundred pages worth of information, diagrams, schematics of circuits, and calculations by the time he started moving on to the areas he couldn¡¯t fix before. Now however, Tsar was finding it easy to use the information to correct things. His progress was slow but steady as he looked over the information and actually began learning a lot about how mana and the forces of electricity interacted with each other. After what had to have been eighteen hours of nonstop erasing and rewriting things in the Grimoire Tsar was beat. He curled up and fell asleep. The next day passed by in much the same manner. The insights he was gaining about mana and electricity kept growing as he went. Fixing and editing until all the information on page after page was glowing a nice shade of gold. He was slightly concerned that Radgar may have forgotten about him as he went to sleep yet again. But his fears were assuaged the next morning when he awoke to find Radgar sitting on a chair nearby. ¡°Good morning, Tsar, I hope you slept well. And I would like to apologize for not coming to start our training when I said I would. Me and Iggy have been experimenting with the effects of the totems and have discovered their limitations, and strengths.¡± Radgar spoke as Tsar joined him. ¡°Oh? What did you discover?¡± Tsar asked ¡°Well, we¡¯ve discovered the effects of the totem are divided across the number of plants it is effecting. Meaning that if two plants are in the radius of effect each one gets half of the total benefit. That also means that extending the range of its influence can be detrimental depending on what you really want out of the totem. Still an incredibly powerful artifact.¡± ¡°That makes sense, if it didn¡¯t have that limitation, I feel like it would be insanely broken. Can you imagine having several fields worth of crops that were growing 200 times faster than normal? Depending on the growing seasons in the area that could mean the difference between starving during the winter or having so much extra that its going to go bad before it can all be eaten.¡± Tsar said.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. ¡°Indeed. But for a powerful nation it could mean getting a hold of incredibly powerful resources once a year instead of every two hundred years. Certain trees, Flowers, Herbs, and roots have very powerful properties. Like giving permanent boosts to hard to unlock stats or altering the base values for resources to stats by certain amounts. Even increasing regeneration stats values. There are many different kinds, and they represent strategic resources for the nations of the world. The thing about those resources is that they are incredibly slow to grow. Some of them only reaching maturity after a thousand or more years. Your totems would make those resources more prevalent and therefore increase the power of a nation with those resources by a significant margin. I would caution you from revealing any of this type of Totem at all as even if it only provided a 10% boost you would have nations hunting you in order to force a slave contract on you to make more totems for them.¡± Tsar paled at the thought. It was true, even a 10% reduction in the time it took to grow resources like that would be a tremendous boon for any nation. If they found out about something that could make them grow 200 times faster? He could potentially start a world war over something like that. Yep, no more Totems of nurture for the foreseeable future. Although it would be interesting to perhaps bury a stack of four in the middle of a desert and see what happened. ¡°Yeah, not gonna be showing off any of my totems to anyone I don¡¯t trust. Even then I¡¯ll probably keep them as secret as possible. I¡¯m pretty sure the Shaman Class is supposed to help nations develop from primitive tribes. It¡¯s a support class¡­ but a support class that isn¡¯t dedicated to single target healing and buffing. Its all mass buffs and the like.¡± ¡°Your hypothesis is definitely reasonable. But you are forgetting that it has incredible potential for being a magical attack powerhouse. You¡¯ve only seen Wisps. But there are spirits out there that can raze entire cities to the ground overnight.¡± Radgar reasoned. ¡°That may be true, but my spirits can only go a certain distance away from me. Last I checked my Wisp can only get about 30 feet away from me before it won¡¯t go any farther. And that distance hasn¡¯t changed since I first got it.¡± Tsar countered. ¡°So that would make you more of a defense-oriented support. One that could be practically unassailable with the correct spirits bound to you. In a dungeon that would make you incredibly valuable. Especially if you could get some healing and buffing spells under your belt.¡± Radgar lapsed into silence after that. Then Tsar remembered he needed to ask about the thresholds. So, he did. ¡°Ah! I should have told you about those sooner. There are four Mortal Thresholds for the Primary stats which are, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Vitality, Intelligence, Wisdom, Perception, and Charisma. at each one you are offered a different choice. I don¡¯t really remember what they are. But the first one is at 500 stat points, the next one is at 1000, then 1500, then 2000. The next thresholds are called the Core Thresholds. They start at 4000 then 8000 then 12000 then 16000. Again, they offer choices, but they vary from person to person. Then there are the Nascent Thresholds, and they start at 32000 points. Most people reach the first Threshold in the A- Tier but grinders tend to have the first three if not all of the mortal thresholds crossed depending on their classes by the time they even evolve into an A- Tier. It is one of the many reasons why Grinders are both feared and highly respected. Especially grinders with rare classes.¡± Radgar explained Tsar¡¯s mind was spinning with numbers if he was right, it would mean that Radgar himself had stats at over 32000 points. Which just seemed outright ridiculous. But when you think about just the stats gained by race leveling, then classes, then skills, then Titles, and potential other sources of stats like the herbs he¡¯d mentioned earlier¡­ Well, it wasn¡¯t unreasonable to believe that there would be S+ tier individuals with stats in the hundreds of thousands. Especially Grinders. If Tsar only took into account, his Self-named title and only evolved vertically then by the S+ tier with just that he¡¯d be close to the fourth threshold of the Core thresholds in his willpower stat alone. That wasn¡¯t considering class levels, race levels, evolution bonuses, skills, or anything else that could occur between then and now. ¡°Well, that¡¯s good to know.¡± Tsar said scratching the back of his head, ¡°I got two new titles for making those Totems and the Talisman though, so my stats have changed. I didn¡¯t know about the thresholds, so I pissed away the opportunity to actually pick my first threshold bonus. Got the crappy lifespan modifier and I am stuck with it forever.¡± Radgar chuckled at that shaking his head, ¡°Only someone like you would think that enhancing the lifespan modifier is ¡®crappy¡¯. But I will admit that it is slightly useless to you who has infinite retries. Normally the Lifespan stat is equal to five years of life per point by the way. For elves its 20 years per point and they normally start out with 200 points in that stat. By the way, which Titles did you get, I¡¯m curious.¡± Tsar felt his mouth drop at that statement. That meant that as his current race he had a life expectancy of over five thousand years! He could take all the time in the world to level up and he¡¯d be just fine. Shaking his head Tsar answered without really thinking about it. ¡°[Legend] and [Hero]¡± ¡°Hmmm¡­ You may want to hide those two with your talisman when you head out for your adventures. Both are well known in their effects and will make you stand out a lot before you are ready for that sort of attention¡­ You really are a Hero though. At least to me and Iggy¡± Radgar said with a slight sigh. ¡°How in the world could I be a Hero to you two? Isn¡¯t Iggy an L Tier tree? And you are S+ almost L Tier yourself. No way I could be anything more than a slight annoyance to you two. Maybe a pet? Or a child?¡± Radgar laughed a deep belly laugh and actually fell off his seat onto the floor. ¡°My dear boy¡­¡± he managed between gasps, ¡°You have no idea what you¡¯ve done for both me and especially Iggy¡­ You see, World Tree Saplings and indeed trees in general have certain conditions necessary for their leveling. They don¡¯t gain EXP the same way we do. They gain EXP through two factors growth and age. World Tree Saplings in particular have a¡­ well a sort of curse associated with their race. If they do not reach their evolution threshold to become an Adolescent World Tree before they reach a certain age, they will wither and eventually die.¡± Radgar looked sad and his voice was heavy as he continued, ¡°When Iggy chose me to be her druid, unknown to both of us at the time, the previous Druid King was furious. He had been waiting for her seed to mature for over five hundred years at the time. But like I said we were unaware of this. In his fury Dramius went to a curse mage and had him place a very weak curse on Iggy¡¯s seed that would sap away her energy and slow down her growth. It was so minimal that we didn¡¯t even realize it was there for close to 5000 years. Of course, we broke the curse as soon as we found out about it. But¡­ it was too late. The damage had been done. Our best calculations put her growth at over five hundred years behind schedule for her to be able to evolve¡­ That is when I gained my Berserker Class.¡± Radgar had returned to his seat and his eyes held a far off look about them. as if he were seeing the past. ¡°But my dear boy, you have all but guaranteed that Iggy will not only meet the deadline. But will surpass it with a great deal of time to spare¡­ So yes. Even at your low tier and level, you are indeed a Hero to us both.¡± ¡°I second the motion and it passes by majority rule.¡± Iggy giggled, ¡°But seriously¡­ Thank you Tsar. You saved my life, even if it would have been another ten thousand years from now.¡± ¡°Well, I would do it again in a heartbeat. You two are my friends. I¡¯m glad I could prevent you from dying 10,000 years from now. As weird as it feels to me, I¡¯ll probably still be around by then, I look forward to seeing what you become.¡± Tsar said trying to sound nonchalant about it. ¡°Well, now that we¡¯ve got the mushy feely bit out of the way for today, how about some hand-to-hand combat training?¡± Radgar said with mock excitement in his voice. +++ Many hours later, Tsar felt like he¡¯d laid out on a cutting board while a giant chef went to town on him with a meat tenderizer. Radgar had not gone easy on him at all. At first, they¡¯d ¡®sparred¡¯ for nearly five hours straight. During the ¡®sparring¡¯ session Tsar had needed to partake of no less than four healing potions before Radgar called it a day and left him with instructions that he was to practice his spells, making sure to use all of his mana. And keep reading his Grimoire. Also strangely enough, he had told Tsar not to open any notifications until he was told to. It was a strange bit of instruction, but Tsar decided to listen to him about it. So, Tsar practiced using Mana Bullet. Changing its size, shape, and all sorts of things. His favorite was when he used it to replicate the destructo disk. But Tsar quickly ran out of mana and his fun was over for the moment. He would work on fixing the Grimoire of Lightning for an hour then empty his mana again. Rinse and repeat until bedtime. They continued that cycle for three weeks. The sparring sessions were a mixture of sparring and instruction. Every day the sparring would start out as hand-to-hand combat, then, about halfway through the day, Radgar would have Tsar use the various weapons that Iggy had made out of her wood for him. Tsar couldn¡¯t be entirely sure, but he thought that the swords, Spears, daggers, clubs, staves, and bow and arrows, she had made for him were actually a lot better than ones made out of steel would be. They were supposed to be training weapons, but Tsar was certain that if he had hair he could shave with the wooden weapons. He¡¯d certainly made Radgar bleed a few times when he¡¯d actually managed to land a hit. The only complaint that Tsar had about the weapons themselves was that they were obvious designed for someone much larger than he was. Especially the bow. Over the course of the past three weeks Tsar became very comfortable with the weapons, and actually felt like he was somewhat competent unarmed now. Another good thing about the training was that he wasn¡¯t clumsy anymore. He¡¯d gotten used to being able to jump nearly fifty feet into the air. His mind was seeing things on a different level of perspective now, one that actually fit with his current capabilities. On the fourth week Radgar switched up the training to weapons exclusively, and even started coming at Tsar with weapons himself. Which at first terrified him. During all of their sparring Radgar had fought him only using his hands. Now he was bringing swords and spears and everything else just like Tsar. Objectively Tsar knew there wasn¡¯t much to fear. If he died it wasn¡¯t the end of the world. Just a setback. But having a sword swinging at your face or plunging towards your heart is a hard phobia to break. At least that¡¯s technically what it was. Tsar no longer had a rational reason to fear death. But he still did. So, facing off against Radgar who steadily increased his intensity level was a terrifying experience where he truly felt like he was moments from death on a regular basis. As one month blurred into the next and then the next, Tsar was starting to feel pretty anxious about the notifications that were constantly begging for his attention. But he was a man¡­ Frogglin, of his word. So, he restrained himself from looking. It wasn¡¯t hard most of the time to ignore it. He was making tremendous progress with the Grimoire of Lightning. He¡¯d reached the point where the very first spell was located. The spell had had all sorts of wrong materials or blatant lies mixed in with its diagrams and formulas. Honestly the majority of the formulas were completely irrelevant to Tsar as he didn¡¯t actually need to use them. But for his own piece of mind, he corrected and fixed the information anyways. The first spell was called quite simply ¡®spark¡¯ and it fired off a small jolt of lightning into a target no more than ten feet away. When he used the spell, it looked like a beam of light about as thick as a pencil. It didn¡¯t look like a spark or an arc of electricity, it was like a laser pointer beam through thick mist. And contrary to its unassuming looks the spell was actually quite deadly. He¡¯d only hit practice targets with it. but where it hit, it bored a hole through the target and released the electricity to do what it did. His targets were riddled with holes that had massive spiderwebs of burn marks around the holes. Tsar was pretty sure the Spark spell shouldn¡¯t normally be this potent, but because he had fixed its falsehoods in the spell construct it was much better. The Grimoire had described the spell as setting of a jagged arc of electricity up to ten feet away to stun and disable foes. That description was far from correct. It made Tsar wonder how much he was going to end up changing the Grimoires contents by the time he reached the end. He honestly hadn¡¯t found a single page that he hadn¡¯t had to correct something on. It wasn¡¯t all just training though; Iggy would occasionally take Tsar to see more of her statues. And about once a week Radgar would break out wine and they would sit around drinking and telling stories. Admittedly, Tsar had far fewer stories to share. But he did have something to share that neither Radgar nor Iggy could get enough of. Music. Tsar had described a guitar to Iggy, and she¡¯d made one for him, saying that it was a lot like a lute, only different. In his past life he¡¯d been passable at playing a few songs on the guitar, but he¡¯d never really gotten good at it. Now he was sure that he could have made a living playing the guitar and singing in any genre. In modern life on Earth, it is almost impossible to go more than a few days without hearing some kind of music. A passing car, going to a bar, sitting at a restaurant, watching TV. Music is intrinsically part of humanities everyday life on Earth even if we hardly ever realize it. Using Zen Meditation, Tsar was able to remember every chord, every lyric, every note, of every song he¡¯d ever heard, perfectly. And the most incredible bit was that he could use Mimic on his memories to replicate the motions of guitarists that he¡¯s seen playing, both on the Tube and in real life concerts. Translating the songs from English to Eldar, which is the language Iggy and Radgar spoke, was the biggest challenge. It only took him a couple of weeks to figure out dozens of songs. And boy Iggy and Radgar loved music. The sparring took a turn for the more dramatic as Radgar instructed Tsar to use magic as they fought. When Tsar objected because he feared that it would cause too much damage to Radgar if he hit him in a vital area Radgar smiled at Tsar then took his own sword and drove it straight through his own head before yanking it back out twitching like mad as his body healed the damage before Tsar¡¯s very eyes. Tsar was absolutely dumbstruck by the display. ¡°Listen up kid, as you start to reach certain levels and thresholds in your stats¡­ the term vital sort of becomes a suggestion more than reality. As you can see.¡± Radgar said as he wiped his own blood off of the freshly healed area of his forehead that hadn¡¯t even left a scar, ¡°Even the brain becomes more of a¡­ thought assistance device. After a certain point the only way to kill something is to literally hack it to pieces and burn the pieces. Otherwise, most at my level can recover from just about anything. Don¡¯t even bother thinking about those monsters who are even higher than I am. Now that that is covered, let¡¯s see if you can actually do anything with that magic of yours.¡± Turns out Tsar¡¯s lightning magic could pretty easily hit Radgar. It just didn¡¯t do anything. Mana Bullet was too slow to use fighting against Radgar, but that didn¡¯t mean that Tsar didn¡¯t use it. Making Radgar swat away bullet while he closed distance, or firing it point blank range in his face when he needed to escape and distract. It was fairly useful. The hardest part of using magic while fighting was getting over the need to gesture with his hands to cast the spells. It wasn¡¯t necessary and telegraphed what he was about to do. He could cast spells from anywhere though not just his hands. And breaking the habit of using them exclusively took a while. After nearly seven months they had just ended their sparring session and Radgar invited Tsar to come have dinner with him and Iggy. They ate a meal of leafy greens and roots like usual, though it was in an uncustomary silence. Once they finished Radgar poured them both a cup of wine and sat back in a recliner that Tsar had given Iggy the idea to build. ¡°Tsar, I¡¯ll be frank with you son. I didn¡¯t expect you to stick it out with this training for so long. You¡¯ve reached a point in all of your weapon¡¯s skills that normally my students take two years to reach though. And the way that you use your spell¡¯s during combat is shocking, forgive the pun. You have a long way to go yet before you can be considered a master. If you stayed here for the next fifty years training, you would probably reach that point here. But¡­ Iggy if you will.¡± Radgar spoke ¡°Of course, Dearest.¡± Iggy said with a smile in her voice. Tsar always wondered how she did that. It was like you could hear her facial expressions. Anyway, a moment later a pendant hung on a chain made of Iggy¡¯s wood appeared on Radgar¡¯s lap. He lifted it up and gave it a look. The pendant was a round coin made of wood, with a depiction of a World Tree carved into its face. Across its trunk was a set of crossed spears and in the leaves were three words in a language that Tsar didn¡¯t know until he examined them. ¡°Adventure Always Awaits¡± it said across the top. ¡°Tsar Bomba. You have hear-by graduated from the triple A Academy of basic combat readiness for adventurers. And in an unusual turn of events, you have come in as both first and last of your class. Seeing as you were the only member of your class¡­ Anyway, you¡¯ve graduated, you are free to look at your notifications again, and classes have been dismissed. Congratulations!¡± Radgar said with a smile as he slid the pendant over Tsar¡¯s neck and rested the chain on his shoulders. Tsar was dumbfounded. Radgar wasn¡¯t going to train him anymore? Was he free to stay for a while longer? Did they expect him to pack up his stuff and head out right away? ¡°Well don¡¯t be upset boy, you¡¯ve just graduated the academy class work. You have adventures to go on. Spells to figure out and people to meet beyond my own home. You¡¯ll need to hit level 30 before you can head out. But I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if you are damn close already. You are going to have a lot of notifications to go through. But for now, let¡¯s drink.¡± Radgar said as he downed a cup of wine. Chapter 6 Notifications, Leveling Up, and Leaving Home. Radgar had been spot on the money. There were a lot of notifications. Though not as many as he would have thought given that it had been over six months since he¡¯s looked at them. it seemed like a lot of them condensed down if they were related to each other.
Congratulations Through hard work and dedication to finding the truth hidden in lies your Class: Occultist has reached level 21. Attribute points have been distributed. 1,800 skill points awarded.
Congratulations Through hard work, determination, and some very non sorcerer like behaviors your Class: Sorcerer has reached level 21. Attribute points have been distributed. 1,900 skill points awarded.
Congratulations Through hard work and basically cheating by using legendary materials to practice your Class: Shaman has reached level 21 Attribute points have been distributed 1,000 skill points awarded
Congratulations Through your dedication to adding new applicable knowledge and removing falsehoods from the Grimoire of Lighting your bond has grown to level 10 Bond Effect lvl.10: Grimoire gains +1 Spirit slot. Spirit bound to this Grimoire will gain the Lighting Element and be able to use the spells that you have learned that are within its pages. Spirit bound to this Grimoire will take up the available spirit slot and 1 attunement slot. +9,000 EXP
Tsar¡¯s eyes widened as he read through the bond effect. He was pretty sure he had just discovered something that no one had ever encountered before. The bond must be tailored to the individual and accounts for their actual Classes. It was good to see that his bond had grown because of all the work he¡¯d put in to correcting the misinformation within its pages. The real benefit was that he could take a Wisp and turn it into a laser firing turret now. Or if he found some other better spirit, he could have a lightning elemental spirit that had other powers as well. Wisps just floated around and glowed. Anyways, on to the next notification.
Congratulations You have gained the skill: Journeyman Combat Mastery lvl.5 You have trained under a Combat Master in the use of not only your fists but also the most commonly used weapons in the world. Effects: You are comfortable with almost any type of weapon in your hands, you will adapt quickly to unfamiliar weapons and can make do without. During combat your reflexes and speed are enhanced by 5%. +5500 EXP
Congratulations Your skills, Singing, Mimic Speech, Mimicry and Play Instrument (Guitar) have been combined into a new skill: Rock Star lvl.5 You have brought Rock to a world where there was no Rock. You have brought songs of beauty, sadness, anger, and joy from another universe into this one. Effects: +15 Charisma while playing an instrument or singing +30 Charisma while doing both. Can copy any song you¡¯ve heard at least one bar of and learn to play any biologically compatible instrument. Can attempt to copy skills you have observed. +14500 EXP
Congratulations Your skill Mana Siphon has evolved into Greater Mana Siphon lvl.9 Effects: By dedicating 50% of your total mana pool to the Siphon Increases MP Regen by 50%. +950 EXP
Congratulations Your skill Mana Transfer has reached level Max Effect: transfer mana between storage receptacles, Bound Spirits, Familiars, or a willing target at a rate of 2 to 1. +1000 EXP
Tsar wasn¡¯t surprised that Mana Transfer had reached its max level. He¡¯d been using it on his Wisp to make it a battery for him for the past five months, and through the application of mana control he¡¯d already known that he¡¯d gotten the efficiency up to 2 to 1. Greater Mana Siphon was a bit of a surprise. It still used up half of his mana at all times but increasing his regen by 50% was actually a damn good effect. But the most interesting of the skills was Rock Star. It seemed more like a title than a skill. But the system seemed to be fond of silly naming schemes for skills. It was essentially all the skills that made it up but better. And it was also a way that he could increase his mana regen by a further 4.5 per hour. As long as he could sing and play for that long.
Congratulations! By introducing this world Rock¡¯n¡¯roll you have been awarded the Unique Title: [King of Rock¡¯n¡¯roll] Effect: +100 Charisma This title cannot be hidden by any means. The world will know you for the king that you are! Long live Rock¡¯n¡¯roll!
¡®Oh, good god System!¡¯ He knew the system would do something cheeky, but at least it was amazingly beneficial, a hundred more points to his Charisma was welcome any day of the week.
Congratulations You have reached the (apprentice) level of mastery of the Mana Bullet Spell Effect: Greater range of control over the Mana Bullet spell. +3000 EXP
Congratulations You have taken a broken spell, made it what it was supposed to be, and reached the (Journeymen) level of mastery in it. True Spark (Journeymen) Description: Fires a tightly focused beam of electricity up to fifty feet before ballooning occurs. Cost = 100 Mp to 500 Mp Effects: Beam deals 500 points of Lighting element Piercing damage with an additional 500 Lightning element Burn damage at base mana cost. At max cost add 500 to both values. +14,000 EXP
Congratulations You have leveled your skill Utility Tongue to level 10! Effect: Your Tongue can do anything your hands can do¡­ but better. +500 EXP
Congratulations Your skill Rapid Healing has reached Level 10 and evolved into the skill Self-Healing lvl.5 Effect: May convert a combination of Sp and Mp into Hp at a ratio of 5spps+5mpps=5hpps +550 EXP
Congratulations Your skill Generate Poison has reached level 10 and evolved into the skill Create Poison lvl.8 Description: Use this skill to create a variety of poisons for a slight Sp cost. Types: [Necrotic] [Paralytic] [Hallucinogen] Cost = 1sp per ounce +1250 EXP
Congratulations Your skills Rush and Jumping have reached level 10 and evolved into the merged skill Instant Acceleration lvl.9 Description and Effect: Pick a direction. Any direction. Activate this skill to instantly accelerate your body in that direction and twice your running speed. Cost: 1/9th of your total Sp pool. +11350 EXP
Congratulations Your skill Thaumic Digestion has reached level 10 and evolved into the skill Magical Gurgitator lvl.N/A Description: You can literally eat anything. Your body naturally processes materials utilizing residual traces of mp in the stomach near instantly converting anything eaten into Sp, Hp, and Mp depending on what is eaten. +5450 EXP
Congratulations Your skills [enhanced five senses] and [sense mana] have merged into a new skill: Magical Senses lvl.5 Description: Mana has seeped into your sensory organs and enhanced them well beyond the norm of biological possibility. Can see, smell, taste, hear, and feel mana. Effect: +10 Perception per skill level gained +6450 EXP
Congratulations Your skill Decoy has reached level 10 Effect: When using Decoy, increase chances of escape from hostiles by 1% per decoy deployed up to a maximum of 20% +450 EXP
Yeah, Tsar had leveled up pretty much all of his skills. The only ones that he hadn¡¯t practiced over the past seven months were Create Totem, Create Talisman, Find Hidden Things (which he really didn¡¯t know how to practice), Stealth, Swimming, and Commune with Spirit. But overall, he¡¯d made a huge amount of progress. The very last Notification, thankfully. Was one that he was truly not expecting at all.
Congratulations! You are the first student that the [Triple A Academy of basic combat readiness for adventurers] has had in over 20,000 years. You graduated at the top of your class, technically, and fulfilled the secret assignment of not looking at your notifications until after graduation. +50% bonus EXP for the secret assignment, +100% Bonus EXP for being first in your class, +200% Bonus EXP for being the first to attend in over 20,000 years. Calculating Awards¡­ Awards gained: Title [First in Class] +150,000 EXP Title Effects: You get to show off¡­ What you thought that all Titles were awesome stat bonuses? Also you cant hide this one either.
As soon as Tsar read the last Notification, he felt a whomp in his chest as his body was flooded with EXP and more power than ever before as his level skyrocketed. New Notifications popping up as soon as he¡¯d finished reading the last ones. He gritted his teeth and pulled them up.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
Awe you thought the Notifications were over? Too bad you get some more.
Congratulations You have reached Race Level 30 and are now able to evolve. Would you like to evolve? Y/N
Congratulation You now qualify for more classes. Check them out before you evolve.
Tsar dismissed the notifications and held his breath¡­ Nope that was all of them. Was it just him or was the System starting get¡­ Hostile? No that wasn¡¯t it. more like it felt like it was gaining personality and a sense of humor. He could get behind that. His notifications in the past had been droll and dull. Now they seemed to have a bit more to them. Maybe the System just took time to get to know people and started customizing the experience based on the individual. Anyway, Tsar needed to go talk to Radgar pronto. He wanted to talk to him before he evolved and maybe even get his advice about the possible new classes. But first he took a peek at his stat sheet to see how it had changed.
Name: Tsar Bomba Race: Mystic Frogglin(C+) Race Level: 30 Evolve? [-31%] Titles: [Self Named] [Savage] [Skipper] [Shaman King] [Grinder] [Sorcerer] [Lesser Tactician] [Legend] [Hero] [King of Rock¡¯n¡¯roll] [First in Class] Classes: (Occultist(lvl.21) Hidden) Shaman(lvl.21) Sorcerer(lvl.21) 9150 banked EXP Death Counter 32
Options Menu¡­
[Sp 7,070/7,070] 2.45sph Resource Pools [Hp 7,020/7,020] 1.21hpm [Mp17,290]4.469mpm (mp2,335/8,645)6.703mpm
Strength: 707 Dexterity: 702 Constitution: 707 Toughness: 702 Fortitude: 702 HP Regen: 702 Vitality: 702 Lifespan: 706 Attributes Intelligence: 1,027 Wisdom: 1,027 Perception: 876 Charisma: 928 Willpower: 2,416 MP Regen: 702(2,657)+wis+cha MP Capacity: 702(1,729)+int Soul: 702 Aura: 702 See next page¡­ 1 of ???
Skills [Mana Transfer lvl.MAX] [Bind Spirit lvl.MAX] [Mana Control lvl.N/A] [Casting Requirements? Lvl.N/A] [Hey Mana! Look at Me! lvl.N/A] [Magical Savant lvl.N/A] [Mind of the Occultist lvl.N/A] [Auto Translate lvl.N/A] [Bottomless Stomach lvl.N/A] [Magical Gurgitator lvl.N/A] [Poison Resistance lvl.N/A] [Heat Resistance lvl.N/A] [Acid Resistance lvl.N/A] [Wood Magic Resistance lvl.N/A] [Pain Resistance lvl.N/A] Perpetual Rebirth lvl.10 Utility Tongue lvl.10 Analyze lvl.10 Zen Meditation lvl.10 Soul Vault lvl.10 Decoy lvl.10 Instant Acceleration lvl.9 Greater Mana Siphon lvl.9 Create Poison lvl.8 Swimming lvl.5 Stealth lvl.5 Journeyman Combat Mastery lvl.5 Create Totem lvl.5 Self-Healing lvl.5 Rock Star lvl.5 Magical Senses lvl.5 Create Talisman lvl.3 Find Hidden Things lvl.1 Commune With Spirit lvl.1 Spells Mana Bullet (Apprentice) True Spark (Journeyman)
Attunement Slots I I I I OOOO OOOO OOOO
Equipment Slots I OOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO
Grimoires Grimoire of the Explorer (Bond lvl.1) Grimoire of Lightning (Bond lvl.10) Grimoire of The Doctor (Bond lvl.1) Bond effect lvl.1: Reading the information contained within will allow instant recall of that information. Bond Effect (Grimoire of Lightning) lvl.10: Grimoire gains +1 Spirit slot. Spirit bound to this Grimoire will gain the Lighting Element and be able to use the spells that you have learned that are within its pages. Spirit bound to this Grimoire will take up the available spirit slot and 1 attunement slot.
BloodLine: Soul Well 245 [Blank] [Mundane Souls] +2.45 per hour to all resource pools
Ok a lot had changed since he¡¯d last looked at it. He was tempted to use his currently Bound Wisp for his Grimoire of lighting¡­ but he had a feeling that once he assigned the slot, he¡¯d be stuck with the Wisp forever. Right now, he could dismiss the bond with the Wisp whenever he felt like it. but it was a convenient mana supply right now. On further consideration Tsar was probably going to as Iggy if she could supply him with a dozen more so that when he left, he¡¯d essentially have six times the mana pool¡­ and a bunch of glowing lights when he wanted them. His Wisp could turn invisible at will, so it was almost always set to be invisible. On top of that Tsar now had enough skill points to buy two skills from each of his class skill trees. So, he¡¯d need to look into that soon or else he¡¯d forget. It was almost tempting to Bind another Grimoire just to have a mental checklist. But he wasn¡¯t about to waste an Attunement Slot for that. His musings over with Tsar called out to Iggy. ¡°Hey Iggy. I need to talk to Radgar¡­ and you as well, I guess. Can you move me over to him?¡± he asked. ¡°Sure thing kiddo. We figured you¡¯d end up needing to talk to us after you looked through your notifications. Especially after graduation.¡± Iggy spoke as Tsar sensed the absurd amount of mana she was using to activate a teleport around him. ¡°Hey kid! I suppose you got some good news, and you are about to have to skedaddle so I don¡¯t blow my top?¡± Radgar spoke the moment Tsar appeared. ¡°I guess¡­ kinda? Um¡­ I can evolve now. But I have a few questions. Apparently, I qualify for some new classes now and I would like to get your input on them if at all possible. Also¡­ How come you never told me it¡¯s been over 20,000 years since you¡¯ve had company!??¡± Tsar nearly shouted that last question. The thought of Iggy and Radgar here all alone for 20,000 years was heart wrenching when he knew the two of them. They were practically social butterflies. Radgar looked surprised and seemed like he didn¡¯t know what to say for a moment before he collected himself. ¡°Well, honestly I didn¡¯t know it had been that long. The days, months, years, decades and centuries all sort of just blur together¡­ Has it really been that long Iggy?¡± He asked staring off into the distance. ¡°Probably a little longer than that if I¡¯m being honest. You know I sleep most of the time anyway, time doesn¡¯t mean the same thing to me as it does to you two.¡± Iggy replied ¡°Well anyhow, its not really all that important how much time we¡¯ve spent here. And of course, I will try to provide the guidance that I can about potential classes. The ones you already have are a significant increase on your level requirements already though.¡± Radgar said as he took a sip of wine. Tsar nodded and checked out his potential class. ¡°[Spell Singer], [Bard], and [Skald] are the only ones that stand out to me.¡± Tsar said. There were other generic ones like Fighter, Archer, and Defender. But he really wasn¡¯t even interested in them. ¡°Hmmm¡­ Spell Singer is a common class among the Elves. It is a magical crafting class with decent combat potential. Bard is a very common class that focuses on party buffs early on, but a high-level bard can use songs and instruments to provide buffs to entire armies if they pick the right skills. Skald is an incredibly rare class. Think I¡¯ve only ever seen two or three of them. It adds a great deal to the EXP requirements¡­ 25,000 if I remember correctly. One of its level one Unique skills is a skill that adds the Charisma count to the Hp Regen stat. On top of that it increases Charisma, Vitality, Constitution and Strength by 10 points per class level. It is technically a battle bard class that specializes in absorbing damage while dealing it back. Borderline Berserker class. They always sang while they fought to provide not only buffs for themselves but also for their party.¡± Ragnar explained Tsar didn¡¯t know what to do about it. The Skald class was just awesome. Adding 25,000 EXP to his level requirements though? He wasn¡¯t sure. It sounded like it would synergize with his current classes though. Adding his charisma to his Hp Regen stat would put his regen at over two and a half points of regen per minute at the moment. ¡°If you were in my position, what would you do?¡± Tsar asked with trepidation. ¡°I would immediately take the Skald class. It synergizes with your already existent skills and is a fantastic match with the Sorcerer Class seeing as they both give Charisma and modifiers using it. In fact the Sorcerer skill tree has multiple skills that either give more charisma per level or in some other way add to charisma. The reason I would not hesitate to add the requirements to my leveling is that I already have a lifespan measuring thousands of years as my current race. And it¡¯ll only make my life a little more difficult when I happen to Die and be reborn somewhere and have to grind my way back up. EXP requirements are really just Time sinks. Not really a burden to an immortal¡­ Pseudo immortal.¡± Radgar explained his reasoning. Tsar took a step back in his mental processes. Radgar was right. He was thinking short term. Having the class could add years to leveling plans, but with his current lifespan stat, he could comfortably live to the ripe old age of 7,060 as long as he wasn¡¯t killed. But like he said it would only really be an annoyance to die, a setback that he would recover from¡­ Taking a deep breath Tsar pulled up the Skald window and looked it over.
Class: Skald Requirements Met: Has reached race Level 30 at least once. Has the Journeymen Combat Mastery skill. Has one or more Singing or instrument playing skills. Has received hundreds of wounds from multiple types of weapons, and magical attacks. Has a Title related to music. Has the Charisma Stat above the First Mortal threshold but below the Second. Has not taken the Bard Class or any of its derivatives. Has the Willpower Stat Unlocked. Has the Self-Healing skill. Has one or more attunement slots open. Has five or more resistance skills. Does not have an armor bearing skill. Description: A Skald gains +10 Cha, +10 Vit, +10 Con, and +10 Str per class level gained. Gains access to the Skald skill tree. Gains the skills [The Sound Of Music lvl.N/A] [I¡¯m To Pretty to Die lvl.N/A] and [Baritone Voice lvl.N/A] Accept Class Y/N
¡°And I thought that Shaman was a restrictive class with its requirements¡­ this is insane.¡± Tsar said as he mentally clicked to accept the class. Then the new notifications came rolling in. He knew what they were. He was just over looking at little blue boxes today. Ya know?
Congratulations You are now a Skald lvl.1 Stat points allocated. You have gained the skills [The Sound Of Music lvl.N/A] [I¡¯m To Pretty to Die lvl.N/A] and [Baritone Voice lvl.N/A]
The Sound Of Music lvl.N/A Your fingers pluck the strings of your chosen instrument to the woe of your enemies and the awe of your allies. Effect: Music played by any instrument or sung using your voice during battle imposes a ¡®weakness¡¯ debuff on enemies within range of your voice. Severity of the debuff ranges from -1% to Str and Dex, up to -10% to Str and Dex. Severity of debuff is based on the difference in Will. Applies ¡®Skaldic Inspiration¡¯ buff to allies within range of your voice. Strength of buff ranges from +1% to allies two highest stats, to +10% to allies two highest stats. Strength of buff is dependent on your Will
I¡¯m To Pretty to Die lvl.N/A You are so gods be damned gorgeous that it actually helps you heal faster! Effect: Adds Charisma total to Hp Regen total to determine total regen rate.
Baritone Voice lvl.N/A There is power and bass in your voice. It gets the ladies all hot and bothered and sends weak men crying home to suck on their mommy¡¯s tits where they belong. Effect: The force of your Will is carried with your voice. Intimidation, Persuasion, Seduction, Trading. Virtually any social interaction is made easier for you by the sheer Willpower in your voice.
Tsar laughed when he read the second skill. Baritone voice was slightly ominous though. Was he going to have to become one of those strong silent types in order to just accidentally influence peoples minds with his words? He didn¡¯t know but he wasn¡¯t going to find out here and now, so it didn¡¯t really matter. ¡°Alright well that¡¯s taken care of.¡± Tsar spoke and nearly hiccupped in surprise at the sound of his own voice. It was rich and deeper than it had been a minute ago. ¡°What happened to your voice? It sounds good like that don¡¯t get me wrong, I just wasn¡¯t expecting that.¡± Iggy said ¡°Damn, the effect of all that Willpower is evident already now. As you level up that Class you will probably start to be able to kill low leveled monster by just telling them to die pretty soon.¡± Radgar chuckled at his own statement. But Tsar was actually pretty sure that that was at least partially right. ¡°Well now that that is done¡­ When do you think you are heading off? Not that we want you to leave sooner, but the sooner you do the sooner you can come back. Just don¡¯t forget to be really strong by then and bring a class removal item with you so we can get rid of this damned Berserker Class.¡± Radgar spoke ¡°But before you go! I have whole bunch more Totems and Talismans for you to take with you. Also don¡¯t forget all the weapons and the clothes. Your next evolution is going to be bigger. Most Likely a Frogman or Toadman variant, I¡¯m sure.¡± Iggy stated ¡°Ok mom I already packed everything. Remember¡­ Soul Vault?¡± Tsar teased ¡°Ah but you didn¡¯t get the new totems and talismans yet. And don¡¯t call me mom. I¡¯m to young to be a mother.¡± Iggy said with that voice that somehow conveyed a mock disdainful sneer along with it. Tsar really wished he knew how to do that. He¡¯d tried mimicking it a lot but just couldn¡¯t seem to do it. +++ A few hours later Tsar found himself out in the meadow surrounding Iggy which was in turn surrounded by a swamp the size of Nebraska. Radgar managed the entire area except for a swath around its circumference that was about fifty miles thick. Tsar needed to make it to that area before he evolved or else his presence would prod Ragnar¡¯s Hermit senses, which would in turn activate his berserker blood rage, which would mean that Tsar would have about half a second to live even if he was over three hundred miles away. Radgar moved so fast that he broke the sound barrier when he wanted to. And by the time he returned he would have to be just as strong. His mission was to level up, grind, level up, grind and continue until he was strong enough to take on Radgar. Then he would find a Class removal item, come back, beat Radgar into submission, and either forcefully take his Berserker class from him, or make it to Iggy¡¯s meadow and leave the item there while he fled so that she could administer the item to Radgar when he calmed down. All of this had been discussed. At a minimum Tsar was going to need stats close to fifty thousand a piece to do this. Tsar had a long road ahead of him¡­ Both literally and metaphorically. The best guess that Radgar had as to which way an actual town might be, was to the west. Tsar figured it was as good a direction as any and started running. The only thing he was wearing was the chain of world tree sapling wood upon which two items hung. His graduation pendant, and his Talisman that provided a false screen to people using skills or spells to see his stats. He¡¯d set it up so that it only hid four things. His actual race, which he¡¯d set to Frogman, and the Titles [Self Named] [Legend] and [Hero]. The race part was simply because he had checked his potions for evolutions and only three of them native to the material plane. He was going to pick Mystic Banded Frogman(B+) first. Then he was going to grind. And grind a lot. His goal was to reach the fourth Core threshold of 16,000 stat points across the board before he progressed to A- Tier and did it all over again. For right now, Tsar was eating up the distance between him and the edge of the swamp. Once he reached the edge would evolve. Then he would farm some monster souls along the edge of the swamp for a little bit. Then he would set off looking for a town. +++ It took Tsar only two days to exit the swamp. In two days, he¡¯d managed to cover at least 300 miles of rough and unforgiving terrain. Granted he hadn¡¯t gone to sleep that whole time and had kept a steady pace. If he remembered correctly, and he was pretty sure he did, humans back on earth could reliably travel about 30 miles a day in favorable terrain on foot. He¡¯d technically done five times that in heavily unfavorable terrain without sleeping or stopping for more than a few minutes to relieve himself or harvest a few souls here and there. Most of the monsters in the area were E Tier and only gave him 1 EXP for killing them. Anything below E+ didn¡¯t even give him experience. But they still gave him their souls. He¡¯d found a place where Life-Mote Tadpoles were spawning. Like actually spawning. Mana itself kind of just¡­ created them in batches of a couple hundred at a time spontaneously wherever there were large quantities of Life affinity mana. Radgar had taught him that. Tsar thought it was incredibly odd that the tadpoles were a sort of natural phenomenon that actually had souls. Well, it was convenient. He¡¯d stumbled upon a large spanking and a single cast of True Spark into the water had netted him nearly three hundred new souls for his collection. And overall, his whole trip had netted him an even five hundred shiny new souls. Raising his regen via souls to 7.45 an hour. It hadn¡¯t been immediately obvious when he¡¯d reached the edge of the swamp. The tree cover was still pretty much absolute. But the ground steadily became more solid and the puddles less frequent as he ran. When he finally reached the last of the trees and a view of grassy fields and rolling hills met his eyes, he knew it was time to evolve. He huddled up underneath the cover of the trees and made his selection. Then promptly passed out.
Congratulations You have evolved into a Mystic Frogman level 0 banked EXP applied. Evolution Bonus: +10 to all unlocked Stats Racial Bonus: Mystic Frogman receive a +14 Cha, +14 Per, and +14 Con per Race Level gained
Congratulations You have accomplished something that very few monsters ever achieve. You have evolved into a Natural Sapient life form. You have been awarded the Title: [Evolver] Effects: +10 Int, +10 Cha, and +10 Wis. This title is impossible to hide.
Tsar was instantly greeted by the notification the moment he awoke. He felt¡­ different. Well, he was obviously different because he¡¯d changed his race yet again. But¡­ he felt like his mind was freer and more open than it had been before. Like there had been a veil that he hadn¡¯t realized was there covering his thoughts. ¡°This must be the difference between natural Sapience and System granted Sapience through stats.¡± He muttered to himself. Honestly, he should have realized it before. His brain before this point in his life hadn¡¯t actually been designed for the types of thoughts he was having. Now that his mind was in a body that was actually supposed to have a Sapient mind in it everything was Clear. It was like someone had just put a brand-new ram card into a computer that sorely needed it. He was enjoying the feeling of his newfound mental freedom when he started to examine his new body. He was large. Probably close to six five. His muscles were perfectly tones beneath a deep green skin that had swirling gold-colored patterns throughout it, making it look like he had gold tribal tattoos across his whole body. His hands were slightly elongated compared to a normal human hand and the pads at the tips of his fingers were slightly wider than normal. His legs and feet looked decidedly human save for being a wee bit on the wide side and of course deep green with tribalistic gold swirls. And his¡­ Member¡­ Seemed like it was a good normal size and shape, but green with intricate swirls of gold. Speaking of his dangly bits, he was still naked. He quickly remedied that with a pair of dark brown pants and a white loose-fitting shirt that looked like one of those shirts¡¯ pirates wear in the movies. Tsar was sure that he probably looked ridiculous. Especially because he didn¡¯t have any shoes or boots. Radgar was adamantly against footwear of any kind. It was almost a religion to him. With clothes on and wearing a new skin. Tsar looked out over the rolling fields and set off westward. Chapter 7 Joining the guild Now there is something that is of particularly important note. In the¡­ past eight months? Yeah, Tsar was pretty sure it had been around eight months since he¡¯d been born into this new world. So yeah, in the past eight months Tsar had barely ever caught a glimpse of the sky. Inside the swamp was always overshadowed by tree cover that was thick enough that in many places it practically nighttime all the time. And all that time spent with Iggy and Radgar had been under the cover of Iggy¡¯s canopy or within her trunk. So, this was the first time that Tsar was actually seeing the sky and sun in all of its alien glory. Which to his utter disappointment wasn¡¯t any weird shade of color, there weren¡¯t multiple suns, or anything visually different about the sky. The only odd thing was that Tsar was damn sure that it was getting pretty late, but the sun was still at the noon position in the sky, directly overhead. They must be on the equator or something because it looked like it was directly over his head. Tsar was headed west, away from the swamp at a full out sprint while keeping an eye out for humans or any other races that might be around here. He¡¯d only been going for about fifteen minutes when the sky started to dark and he slowed down, then came to a stop and looked up at the sky in horror. The sun was still directly overhead but it was growing darker and darker by the minute. Changing the shade of light, it was giving out from yellow white to silver blue. In a process that seemed to take about an hour the sun¡­ became¡­ the¡­ moon¡­ Now you might expect Tsar to just kind of shrug his shoulders and be like ¡®just ignore the blatantly magical shit¡¯ but that is not what happened as he stood there gazing up at a full moon that was perfectly smooth and silver blue, still directly over his head. What happened was an utter mental break down. What he¡¯d just seen with his own eyes completely broke physics. Also, there were no stars. At all. How did gravity work here? Why were his insights into how electricity worked correct in a world where the sun and moon were literally the same thing? And it just floated there directly overhead without moving. Tsar had seen a lot of magical things, like his Grimoires for example, that just defied reality as he knew it to be. Even though his Grimoires looked to be the size of a pocketbook, each one had practically an infinite number of pages. For some reason Tsar didn¡¯t really have a problem with that. He could just accept it. It felt small and ultimately not important to dwell on the little things that shattered physics. He¡¯d been collecting souls after all and that didn¡¯t really make sense. But the fact that the sun and the moon were the same thing and that that thing just hung out directly overhead at all times. It basically plunged Tsar¡¯s mind into crisis. Tsar stood there looking up at the moon for nearly an hour before he could finally break the mental funk that took him from this revelation. Now he was wondering what the world was shaped like. Shaking his head Tsar decided he had better find a place to sleep. It didn¡¯t take him long to find a nice grassy hill and lay out a large bedroll. He fell asleep after only a bit of tossing and turning. The next day Tsar pointedly did not look up at the sky as he set off on his manifest destiny journey to the west. There was a river to the south of his position that seemed to be flowing towards the swamp. And Tsar decided to follow it. once he got close enough to the river Tsar realized that there was a worn path on its banks. Like people regularly trod down this side of the river, back and forth. As he continued making his way west Tsar came upon probably the most Clich¨¦ thing he could think of. A group of twenty or so bandits. He¡¯d analyzed them and they actually had both the Title and the Class Bandit. Their five highest stats were around the 250 mark and all of them B+ Tier Humans. ¡°#$& ^&%@ (*&^ Boys? A lone adventurer whose lost his party?¡± one of the groups spoke, apparently trying to come off as intimidating, ¡°Seems like he even lost his shoes!¡±, ¡°Maybe he¡¯s a Druid dumbass.¡±, ¡°Still easy pickings.¡±, ¡°He doesn¡¯t have anything on him!¡±, ¡°Expanded bags, idiot.¡± ¡°Hey Frogger, hand over your stuff and we¡¯ll let you be. No harm, just a bit of coin out of your pocket.¡± The first of the group spoke. ¡°Are you guys sure you want to pick a fight with me? Any of you got Identify? Or a better skill?¡± Tsar asked them. He was pretty sure that he could take this bunch. He was faster and stronger than them by quite a bit, but a numbers advantage was still a numbers advantage. Tsar really should have made himself that Shield Talisman it could have helped here. ¡°Yeah, It says you are a race level 0 Frogman [Shaman] [Sorcerer] [Skald]. I only know one of your Classes Frogger, but a low-level guy like you against 20 of us is still a bad match for you.¡± The first guy spoke again. ¡°You should really get that skill leveled up there pal. I¡¯m a Grinder. I just evolved Laterally. Do you really want to get yourself and all your friends killed over the absolutely nothing I have on me?¡± Tsar attempted to reason with the group. ¡°Grinder?¡± the bandit spit on the ground after that word. ¡°There wouldn¡¯t be no Grinders coming out of the swamps. There¡¯s nothing there worth killing unless you go so deep that the monster shows up and slaughters you.¡± The bandit said but he looked unsure of himself now. ¡°Look I¡¯m not trying to be a hero and fight you all just because you are [Bandits]. I can see the Class and the Title. I can also see that most of you are [Farmers] or [Peasants] first. I¡¯ll be honest I didn¡¯t even know that [Peasant] was a class until just now. But I can tell you that your highest stat is only a third of what my lowest stat is. Obviously, you all Chose banditry either because you had little choice, or because you were desperate and needed to do it to put food on the table. I don¡¯t have anything against you all personally, but if you make me have to fight¡­ You will all die.¡± Tsar focused on putting as much emphasis on his little threat as possible. Hoping that the power of Baritone Voice would make these men back down. Although twenty more souls certainly wouldn¡¯t hurt. It worked. He smelled urine and spotted several of the bandits now sporting wet pants. The lead bandit was pale. Tsar took the moment to leap over the bandits¡¯ heads and activated Instant Acceleration as soon as he cleared their heads. He landed with a quick roll nearly two hundred feet away from the group. He could hear them shouting at each other as they turned to see him sprinting off down the path. Slightly winded from using Instant Acceleration. Dumping 1/9th of your entire stamina pool all at once was pretty tiring even if it didn¡¯t leave you low. It only took an hour after the little bandit confrontation before he was met with the sight of farmlands all around the river and a town in the distance that actually looked fairly large. Granted Tsar had no idea what the local governments were like or the economics of the area. This could be a tiny trading hub, or a large one. He just didn¡¯t have any reference points. The town was a classic medieval era fantasy design. It had a thick stone wall that surrounded the entire area with houses in it. Tsar estimated that the wall was about thirty feet tall and circled an area larger than five miles. Crossing the river at two points with a metal grating that would keep people from swimming into the town from outside. On the outside of the wall a setup of docks with small riverboats attached to them looking kind of like a boat rental for those looking to head down river towards the swamp. Tsar took all this in as he slowed to a jog while aiming for the gates. There were hundreds of people going through the gates in both directions. those coming out were spreading out immediately and seemed to be heading off to the different farm plots around the area. When Tsar reached the gate, he heard muttered conversations all around him, and noticed quite a few nasty looks thrown his way. There were two guards posted at the gate who were not paying attention to anyone until he made to go into town. ¡°Oi! Frogger! Get your arse over here.¡± One of the guards called. ¡°Is there a problem,¡± Tsar said, using analyze on the man to see who and what he was, ¡°Constable?¡± ¡°Aye thereisa problem. We ain¡¯t seen you round here afore.¡± The man spoke gruffly and Tsar wouldn¡¯t have thought it out of place if he¡¯d had a spitter and was chewing tobacco, ¡°We needs ta scan you afore you go into town and make a record of ya. That way we know who¡¯s to blame when you do somethin stupid. Standard Procedure.¡± The guard pulled out a stone of some sort and Tsar felt him push mana into it. The guards eyes went wide when, Tsar assumed, he was reading whatever amount of information his scanning tool allowed him to get. ¡°Well¡­ Now don¡¯t go causing any trouble in town now ya hear? If you do, depends on what it is, it could mean a fine or jail time.¡± The man said with a quiver in voice. The guard was visibly shaking as he stored the stone back in its pouch and gestured for Tsar to go on through. He wondered what that was about. The man¡¯s stats had actually been pretty decent at around 450 as his highest stats. Tsar was unsure why the guard would be afraid of someone like him. ¡°Could I ask for direction to the local Adventurers guild if there is one here?¡± he asked the guard. ¡°Straight up the main thoroughfare. Cain¡¯t miss it.¡± The guard spoke, obviously wanting Tsar to leave. So, he did. The Town was more like a small city, probably held a population of somewhere between five and ten thousand. The streets were wide if not the cleanest. The pedestrians seemed healthy enough, and the buildings looked sturdy. All in all, not a terrible place. Tsar found that the guard had been absolutely right. The adventurer¡¯s guild hall was not something easily missed. Mainly because it was a giant square that looked like it was made of solid steel. It had a big set of rotating doors that were eternally spinning, also made of steel. And above the doors inset in the otherwise perfectly flat surface of the metal were the giant capital letters A and G. Tsar mustered up his courage and walked through the rotating doors. The oddest thing about walking through the doors was that it felt almost like when Iggy teleported him. Something magical was happening just entering the doors of the guild hall that used a tremendous amount of mana. The inside of the Hall was not at all what he expected it to be. He¡¯d expected what is normally associated with adventurers¡¯ guilds in books and games. An open tavern with a quest board and the like. What he found was a massive hall with checker tiled floors, Greek style pillars rising to an arched roof far above his head with massive chandeliers hanging from it. between each of the pillars was another rotating door labeled with the name of the room. Directly in front of Tsar was a huge desk just after the entrance. There was a single woman manning the desk with her nose in a book that looked to be a Grimoire. She seemed to be an elf, tall with pointed ears and pale skin. Slender build. A face that most actors on earth would have committed genocide to have. The hall was far from empty though. He could see people coming and going through the different doors leading rooms with various different names above them.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Tsar stood there for a few moments not sure exactly how to proceed before he cleared his throat. ¡°Good morning, ma¡¯am.¡± Tsar spoke, getting the woman¡¯s attention, ¡°I was hoping to possibly join the guild if that is allowed?¡± The woman nearly dropped her book as she glanced up rapidly and let out a little squeak. ¡°By the gods! You startled me.¡± She said while gripping her chest like she was afraid her heart would jump out of it. ¡°I¡¯m sorry what was your question?¡± She turned her full attention on Tsar, and he couldn¡¯t help but feel a little self-conscious. This was possibly one of the most beautiful women Tsar had ever seen and he was feeling incredibly underdressed in her presence. He mentally centered himself before responding. ¡°My apologies, Ma¡¯am. I am new to all of this.¡± He said, gesturing around the hall, ¡°I was wondering if this is where I come to sign up to become a member of guild.¡± As Tsar spoke, he felt a large mana signature moving towards him. ¡°It would indeed.¡± A mans voice called out from across the hall. ¡°Send him up to me and I¡¯ll take care of this one personally Maybell.¡± The woman, Maybell, he guessed glanced over her shoulder at the retreating form of the man as he entered a set of rotating doors with a label over them saying ¡°Branch Manager¡¯s Office¡±. ¡°Well, it looks like the manager wants to handle your case personally. If you¡¯ll just head on over there everything should be sorted.¡± Maybell said, sounding slightly disappointed, ¡°I look forward to seeing you around.¡± ¡°Likewise miss Maybell.¡± ¡°Just call me May, only the manager uses my full name.¡± ¡°Ok, May, I look forward to seeing you around as well.¡± Tsar said, and he meant it to. She should have the Skill [I¡¯m Too Pretty To Die], not him. It brightened up his mood at just the thought that he might see her around. Tsar walked around the massive desk and made his way over to the doors to the branch managers office. He walked through and found a waiting area with about fifty seats set up in rows. It was very modern looking. The manager¡¯s office was set behind a wall that looked to made of frosted glass, the door to the room was ajar and Tsar could see the manager sitting at his desk. ¡°Please come in. I don¡¯t get many appointments and have a pretty open-door policy. When it comes to meetings. Can I get you anything? Tea, water, scones?¡± The manager said as Tsar took the seat across from. The Manager was well-dressed in a kind of Jedi Combat Robes kind of way. He looked like human man, that appeared to be middle aged. He had short cropped brown hair and dark brown skin. His face was clean shaven and overall, he seemed unassuming and definitely wouldn¡¯t stand out in a crowd. But to Tsar¡¯s magical senses he stood out like a sore thumb. He practically radiated mana. ¡°No thank you. As you heard, I¡¯m here to join the guild.¡± Tsar replied. ¡°Indeed, though I do find it curious. You see when anyone enters or leaves the guild hall there are enchantments that scan them. The scan is fairly detailed, Guild Status, Race, Name, Race Level, Classes and their levels, and even Resource pools. I get an alert when specified unusual characteristics appear in the scan data. Namely, Unknown Classes, specific classes designated as dangerous, unusually high resource pools, Unknown Titles, and specific Titles. That sort of thing. Its all very complex. You came to my attention the moment you walked through the door as someone with not only two royalty titles, one of which has never before been seen, but also the [Skipper] the [Grinder] and the [Evolver] titles on top of multiple others. Not only that but you have Two classes of interest. Shaman, and Skald.¡± The manager spoke. ¡°Ok¡­ do those things disqualify me from joining the guild?¡± Tsar asked ¡°Absolutely not.¡± The manager stated with emphasis, ¡°In fact, it puts you right on the fast track. Getting you to see me, the only person in this shithole of a town that can actually certify new members of the guild. I am, however, curious. It is obvious from your level that you only just evolved into a natural Sapient recently. Most of those with the Evolver title have had tremendously negative experiences with adventurers in the past and tend to avoid us rather than immediately seek us out. Why come to us?¡± Tsar thought about it for a moment before he decided on telling the manager an abbreviated story of life so far. Explaining about Radgar, but he left out what Iggy was, he just called her a big tree. He didn¡¯t want to lie and set off any skills or enchantments that might be in the room to detect falsehoods, so he just made the story short simple and with too much detail. When he finished telling his story the manager stared at him with his mouth agape for several moments. ¡°Let me get this straight¡­ The Monster of the swamp is actually a Hermit Druid Berserker that used to run a school for adventurers before he got the Berserker Class. Now he cleans up the swamp to ensure that nothing get to too high of a Tier for the surrounding lands to deal with. He found you as a low Tier monster during one of those cleanups and helped you get the Grinder title, put you through his training program for the First In Class Title. Now you are out here to grow strong enough to go back with a Class Removal item to make it so that he can reopen his school.¡± The Manager surmised. ¡°That¡¯s the long and short of it, yes.¡± Tsar replied. ¡°This explains so, so much about that cursed swamp. No one ever understood why the place didn¡¯t get more dangerous than the occasional B Tiers¡­ You do realize that Class removal items are exceedingly rare. Practically national treasure level items in and of themselves¡­¡± The manager rubbed his chin for a moment, ¡°As to joining the guild, absolutely. I will sign off on it in a moment, we just need a drop of your blood on this here card to activate it.¡± Tsar looked at the card with suspicion it was a dark grey metal with nothing on it, about the size of credit card only thicker. He picked it up and analyzed it.
Adventurers Guild Identification Pendant (Incomplete) Material quality: (Uncommon) Workmanship quality: Masterwork Description: A pendant made by a machine that many master Enchanters built for the Adventurers guild long ago. Effect: Completed with a single drop of blood from an approved applicant to the guild. Once completed the Pendant will not count towards any gear slots or attunement slots. It functions as a record keeping instrument for contracts, Guild Credits, and identification for any major faction. Color indicator of thresholds passed. (note: Returning the pendants of adventures who were KIA is rewarded by 2 gold coins per pendant returned.)
It wasn¡¯t anything bad like he¡¯d expected. He grabbed the proffered needle, pricking his thumb before pressing it too the flat surface of the metal. Half a second later the card flashed his name, titles, and classes displayed on a card that had suddenly become a strikingly shiny silver instead of its dark grey from before. ¡°I knew it would be silver.¡± Tsar heard the manager mutter. ¡°What do the colors mean?¡± Tsar asked ¡°Oh, the guild doesn¡¯t like to use Race Tier as a measure of ranks within the guild. We like to go by the thresholds one has passed. Silver means that you have passed the first threshold in your primary stats. Then it goes Gold, Platinum, then Mithril. Obviously, you don¡¯t need to worry about those for a while. For now, I need to know if you want to be a provincial member, or a full member of the guild so that I can complete your card.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the difference?¡± Tsar asked ¡°Well, a provincial member is someone who want to remain loyal to their country of origin, be able to help them fight their battles, work in politics, that sort of thing. We have many nobles who are provincial members. Provincial members have full rights to access to almost all of the guild facilities within their home nation, however they are not allowed to utilize the fast travel network between guild halls located in other countries without first filing a form. A full member is someone who casts aside all national interests and is not allowed to participate in international or political affairs, but has full access to all guild services, additionally they have guaranteed rights of passage to leave cities that are under siege or in some way embroiled in war. The only time a full member is allowed to participate in national interests is in competitions, or if they need to in order to save their own lives.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s go with Full, I¡¯ve got no interest in politics or countries.¡± Tsar responded. The manager nodded and tapped the ring on his finger to the card and beneath his name the words ¡°Full Member¡± appeared in bold print. The manager gave the card a look then handed it over to Tsar. ¡°Now that you are a member of the guild there are a few things I would like to ask you. The class [Skald] is a ¡®lost¡¯ class. The guild has records of its skills and strengths but lost the knowledge of its requirements during the Purge war of the Overlord. The reward for getting the secret of how to obtain the class is 10 Platinum coins¡­ I am going to assume that you are not in the know about currency given your origins, but the denominations are copper, silver, gold, platinum, mithril, and adamantium. Each one is 100 units of value higher than the last. The average [peasant] with a roof over their heads and a job makes about five silver a month, and that is enough to pay taxes, eat, and still save a small bit if you live frugally. So, you see, 10 platinum is a fortune.¡± The manager leaned back in his chair before continuing, ¡°The reward for brining in a class that has never been seen before though? That is 100 Adamantium. It¡¯s been over a thousand years since someone brought a new class to the table. And the Shaman Class is exactly that, a brand-new class that the guild has never seen or heard of before. If you would be willing to share the requirements, I can authorize the exchange immediately.¡± Tsar didn¡¯t need to think that hard about it. He would keep a hold of the Shaman class for himself until he got to a certain point. Then he would reveal it to everyone. The Skald class he was willing to give the requirements for. ¡°I would like to keep the Shaman class to myself for a while. But I will gladly tell you all about the ridiculously stupid requirements for the Skald class. You are not going to believe how ridiculous it is.¡± With that Tsar wrote out the requirements on a piece of paper as the managers face grew more and more incredulous with each line written down. When he was done writing it out the manager picked up the piece of paper then made a strange gesture and a stack of ten platinum coins about the size of a quarter appeared on the desk. ¡°You were most certainly not wrong about the requirements being ridiculous. But for an Epic Class it kind of goes without saying that its going to very, very hard to get.¡± He said as Tsar made the stack of coins vanish. ¡°First what do you mean by Epic Class? Second, I never got your name and I¡¯ve just been calling you ¡®The Manager¡¯ in my head this whole time.¡± Tsar said. ¡°Oh, I had forgotten to leave it up. Sorry about that.¡± The manager said as he reached into his desk and produced a placard with the name ¡°Leroy Longbottom¡± written on it. ¡°Do you prefer to be called, mister Longbottom? Leroy? Or something else?¡± Tsar asked ¡°Honestly I prefer it when people call me Lee. But, as to your other question. Epic Classes are Classes that give +40 to +45 stat points per Class level and some form of unique skill that applies one set of stats as a modifier to another set of stats. They also add 25,000 the EXP needed to level your Race. Classes like Sorcerer fall outside of the standard conventions and are labeled as Unique Classes. Legendary Classes¡­ they provide +75 stat points per class level, a unique skill that applies one set of stats as a modifier to another set of stats, a unique skill that increases the multiplier of one or more of the resources pools stat values, and a unique skill that changes the base regeneration rate from a per hour basis to a per minute basis for one of the resource pools. But they add 100,000 EXP to the requirements to level your Race and have nearly impossible requirements. The one that I know of has one of the requirements set as: Has Reached Bond level 100 with a (Timeless) quality Grimoire. Among other requirements.¡± Lee lapsed into silence after that. ¡°¡­Well, where does one go to find a tailor around here? And after that where should I go if I want to dungeon dive?¡± Tsar asked ¡°There is a rotating door back in the hall labeled ¡°Services¡± there you will find shops of all sorts. The Guild likes to keep things in house. If it is Dungeoneering you are interested in, then I would recommend using the fast travel network to go to Dungeon City. Before you say anything, yes everyone thinks it is a stupid name. It started out as a joke and has become the actual name of the place. It¡¯s the only known place discovered to Seven Dungeons within walking distance of each other, Infernal, Celestial, Fea, Fire, Air, Water, And Earth. The Big Seven they are called. They start off at Copper rank danger and go up in difficulty every ten floors. I would recommend creating a team or joining one if you wish to delve any deeper than twenty floor or so.¡± ¡°Thank you for the information.¡± Tsar spoke as he stood and reached across the desk to shake Lee¡¯s hand. Lee looked at his hand for a moment with a confused look in his eyes, before tentatively reaching forward. Tsar took his hand in a firm shake before turning around and heading out of the room in search of the Services department. Chapter 8 The Emperors New Swag The Services department of the guild gall seemed to have everything. There were weapons shops, clothing shops, armor shops, drug stores, brothels, tool shops, repair shops, pet stores, you name it, it was there. It was like an enormous shopping mall that stretched on for miles and miles. There was some definite TARDIS bullshit going on with the guild hall building. Also, there were thousands and thousands of people her going about their shopping needs. Tsar would bet almost anything that the Services department was a singular location that all of guild halls in the world somehow magically connected to. He would ask about that later. Tsar hadn¡¯t said anything about his coin situation to Lee, mainly because he had a lot of coin. Now that he had a general idea of how much it was worth, Tsar realized that he was a very rich man indeed. Cleaning out Radgar¡¯s Junk room had at first netted him about 100 platinum and some change. But when he¡¯d found out about the bags of holding? He¡¯d gone through and emptied out all of the bags that had been in the room and he was pretty sure he had about sixty adamantium coins worth of copper, silver, gold, and mithril coins. Radgar had killed a lot of people over the past 20k years. A lot. Not only did Tsar have a dragon¡¯s hoard of gold in Soul Vault. He also had a little over fifty thousand adventurer cards in there. Which he could return to the guild for two gold a piece. Suffice it to say that if Tsar ever had to worry about cash, it wasn¡¯t because he couldn¡¯t afford it. First thing Tsar did was go to a tailor. Entering Tsar found that not many people were in the store despite him having seen lots of people moving in and out. It was very confusing. ¡°I¡¯ve seen that look before. First time in the Service department?¡± an elderly gentleman in clothing similar to a tux said as Tsar entered. Tsar nodded. ¡°You¡¯ll get used to it. You entered the Service department through the Greenbriar entrance, that is why you are here in this particular shop when you walked in through the doors, outside is a communal area, the shops occupy the same places but in different dimensions. Once heard a wizard compare the service department to millions of bags of holding all crammed into one place yet able to hold things individually. Its crazy but it works. Anyway, what can I do for you? I¡¯m Brian by the way.¡± Brian said holding his fist out in a way that could only mean he wanted a fist bump. To which Tsar obliged. ¡°I was looking to get a couple of sets of clothes. Formal, casual, maybe some swimwear, and all the accoutrements, also, undergarments. Pretty much I need an entire wardrobe.¡± Tsar said. ¡°If ya got the money, you can get all that and a blowjob.¡± Brian said with a chuckle, point out the front window and across the street to where a brothel was located. ¡°I love using that line. Sorry.¡± Tsar chuckled at the man¡¯s humor. After flashing the old man a platinum coin, he soon found himself getting measured and being asked questions about how he felt about colors he hadn¡¯t known existed until the old man brought them out. He may have supernaturally good eyesight, but that didn¡¯t mean that he knew how to match colors for shit. In the end he got asked for 10 sets of everything they settled on. The tux like clothes for formal wear, combat jedi like robes as casual wear, t-shirts. A whole wardrobe. What really surprised Tsar was the fact that Brian literally made the clothes right before his eyes in only a few minutes. Obviously, he was using skills granted to him by his [Tailor] class. It was like the fabric just wanted to be moved into the shapes and designs on its own he was just helping it along. It was magical. Soon Tsar was dressed in the jedi combat robe casual wear attire. It was extremely comfortable. The only problem was that he was still barefoot. He now had socks and was down 200 gold from buying the clothing, but he wasn¡¯t done with his shopping spree yet. He might even actually go for that blowjob. Tsar went to a cobbler next and purchased a dozen sets of shoes, boots, and sandals. He got slightly different sizes in case when he evolved his feet changed size. Then he went to a cartographer shop to purchase a map of the known world. Upon entering the store, he found a wall with a map displaying just that. It was confusingly large. There were 17 distinct continents at least as big or bigger than Africa judging by the scale markers in the legend. ¡°Hello there, sir! My name is Reginald, and I am the owner of this fine establishment. Are you just window shopping or are you interest in purchasing a map?¡± A portly ratman with a cane greeted him. ¡°I¡¯m definitely looking to buy. And the names Tsar.¡± ¡°Right then. Are you looking for a Magical or Mundane map?¡± ¡°What¡¯s the difference?¡± ¡°What¡¯s the difference he asks?¡± the ratman flailed his arms dramatically, ¡°A mundane map is just a piece of paper with scribbles on it that can tell you where you are if you know how to look at it. A magical map it an enchanted piece of equipment that takes up a slot, it actively rewrites itself to show you where you are within a certain area. And while we are at it. An Explorers Map is an Attuned item that interfaces with your sight and places a small map there that can be focused upon to see things as if you were there again, it can absorb maps and will have detailed mappings of anywhere you¡¯ve ever been. Information can be exchanged between Explorers maps allowing you to map out places you¡¯ve never been, and they have bond level bonuses that grow in accordance to how much information you either give it or actively explore to fill in.¡± The ratman practically ranted. ¡°Um you are really selling me on the Explorers map. Have you got any in stock?¡± Tsar asked, it was actually something that sounded extremely useful. And definitely worthy of taking up an attunement slot. ¡°You are actually interested in one?¡± The ratman seemed shocked. ¡°It sounds insanely useful, of course I¡¯m interested. I¡¯ve got coin to spare so just name your price.¡± Tsar spoke hoping to move this along. ¡°I have a few in stock. They are blank, so you¡¯ll need to get a few maps to feed to it if you want anything more than everywhere you¡¯ve ever been. If you are well traveled, you might even get a few bond levels out of it just by binding it.¡± the ratman said as he scurried off to one of the other counters and began rummaging around in it. The ratman returned a few seconds later with what looked like a perfectly square slab of polished obsidian. About 24 inches tall by 12 inches wide and about an inch thick. It looked hefty. And its magical signature felt similar to that of Grimoires. ¡°Its 10 platinum for the Explorers map, and if you want some other high-quality maps for it to absorb, which I recommend, it¡¯ll be another 5 and you¡¯ll have almost the entirety of the 17 continents mapped in good enough quality to navigate safely.¡± The ratman spoke. Tsar slapped down 25 platinum and said, ¡°Give me the very best you¡¯ve got, and I¡¯ll add in another five once the map is bound to me and I¡¯ve fed it all of them.¡± The ratmans eyes went wide when he saw the pile of coins and he rushed off to grab things off his shelves. Tsar took the time to Analyze the Explorers Map.
Explorers Map (Blank) Material Quality: Divine Workmanship: System Perfect Explorers maps are not created by the hands of mortals. They are created by the System itself. Explorers Maps are indestructible. Takes 1 Attunement Slot permanently. Bond Effect lvl.1 Places a minimap function in the HUD that tracks coordinates, can be focused on to see maps entire contents, Lesser Tacticians Battle Map functionalitly will be overlaid on the minimap and have its functions doubled in capacity. Would you like to Bind Y/N
Tsar would very much like to bind. He tapped the Y and the tablet of polished obsidian suddenly glowed brightly. Then a minimap popped up in his vision set in such a way that it was unobtrusive but easily visible. There were notifications popping up that wanted his attention but the ratman had returned with his maps. ¡°Just place them on the face of the tablet and it will do the rest.¡± The ratman instructed as he pocketed the platinum coins. Tsar piled the maps onto the tablet and watched as they literally sank into the obsidian material. After a few moments they were completely gone, and the tablet flashed golden for a moment before returning to its normal lustrous obsidian color. Once it was done Tsar popped it into his soul vault for safe keeping and dropped another five platinum pieces on the counter for the ratman. ¡°Pleasure doing business with you.¡± He said as left the store. There were notifications blaring for his attention, but Tsar paid them no mind. He didn¡¯t want to stand around here staring off into space while reading a bunch of messages. He went and found a restaurant and had a nice lunch, then he went stumbled upon a fishing supply shop and decided that he really like a couple of the enchanted fishing poles and got those. He also found a hat that reminded him of a certain notable film franchise explorer and because the fancy struck him bought it. Then it seemed like destiny when he found a shop that had an enchanted bullwhip that responded to mental commands. Tsar was looking like a Jedi that was half ass cosplaying as a fantasy explorer from earth. With a magical whip at his hip, hat on his head, in combat robes, Tsar was sure to get the attention of all of the ladies. Honestly Tsar may have spent far too much time shopping. Half of the stuff he¡¯d bought was going to end up in his Soul Vault and never end up seeing the light of day. He¡¯d even bought fifty barrels of ale. By the time Tsar realized how late it was getting he¡¯d spent a good three Adamantium coins on his various purchases. Returning to the guild hall Tsar pointedly reminded himself that he had not stopped at one of the brothels and spent ten platinum on having an orgy with twenty [Courtesans] who would have made every model on earth look like potatoes in comparison, with skills to match their Class. Nope. Didn¡¯t happen. Needless to say, Tsar was feeling pretty good about life as he entered the guild hall to find a man sitting behind the front desk where Maybell had been. Tsar politely introduced himself, showed the man his card and asked about accommodations. The guild hall had rooms that could be rented nightly, weekly, monthly, or yearly. Tsar only got a room for the night. Entering his room Tsar found it to be like a cheap motel room. Only extremely clean and well maintained. There was a shower and a toilet and even running water. The level of modern here was a weird contrast with everyone running around using swords and bows and stuff. After he was clean, dried off and wearing shorts and a t-shirt he laid down on the bed and opened the notifications he¡¯d been ignoring.
Congratulations You have bound an [Explorers Map] Soul Synchronization in progress¡­ Soul Synchronization complete. Map Generated You have discovered 7 Continents and provided [Rare quality] data on 6 of those continents, and [Extraordinary quality] on 1.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. You have mapped 1 never before seen [Admin class] Pocket Dimension to completion. You have partially mapped 4 metropolises, 47 major cities, 157 minor cities, 4242 towns, and 17 villages that have never been mapped before You have fed your map [High quality] information on 17 already mapped continents, including major city maps and town maps. You have fed your map [basic quality] information on the celestial, infernal, and feedoheem landing points. You have gained the Title: [Intrepid Explorer] Effects: Gain the Class [Intrepid Explorer lvl.1] +100 Will
Intrepid Explorer You have gone places no one can visit, seen things that no one else will ever see, eaten foods that will never be tasted, and ventured where no man has gone before. Description: An Intrepid Explorer gains +10 will, +10 Cha, +10 Per, +10 Dex per class level gained. Gains Access to the Intrepid Explorer skill tree Gains the skills [Explorers Eyes lvl.N/A] [The Thrill of Discovery lvl.N/A] and [Explorers Alacrity lvl.N/A]
¡°What the fucking shit!¡± Tsar exploded. The class didn¡¯t even list requirements, and it had been forced on him and it added another 25,000 EXP to his race level requirements! That¡¯s an additional 1,250,000 EXP necessary to completely level up to fifty in the B Tiers so that he could evolve. Granted he had a 31% decrease to that at the moment. But his total EXP requirements to evolve now were at nearly 2,300,000 EXP! Tsar raged for a few minutes before finally forcing himself to calm down. The system seemed to be fond of forcing Classes on him and he didn¡¯t want to end up with a Berserker class on top of everything because he was too pissed off at the system. At the very least even if he did get a Berserker Class it wouldn¡¯t ruin him like it had Radgar, his willpower stat was simply too high for something like blood rage to actually affect him. Radgar didn¡¯t even have the Willpower stat unlocked It was at the base for his race which would put it somewhere in the 2 to 3 hundred range. Apparently, blood rage required a Willpower stat of a minimum of 1,000 to resist. It was in the description of the skill. The skill actually got significantly more powerful if you could resist it. Meaning a class like that would probably be incredibly synergistic with his own natural abilities. Heaving a deep sigh Tsar forced himself to continue reading his notifications.
[Explorers Eyes lvl.N/A] Effect: You have a keen eye that sees the unexplored and the undiscovered wherever you look.
[The Thrill of Discovery lvl.N/A] Effect: When in any location you have never personally been before EXP gain is Doubled for 24 hours.
[Explorers Alacrity lvl.N/A] Effect: Applies your perception stat as a modifier for Dexterity
Tsar felt like the world slowed down slightly, like his thoughts ran faster. Like the ground beneath his feet was more solid than it had been a few moments ago. But he ignored the feeling and pressed on with the notifications.
Congratulations By being a cheater, you¡¯ve developed an unbreakable bond with your Explorers map. Bond Effect lvl.MAX Grants the minimap function. Lesser Tacticians Battle Map functionality will be overlaid on the minimap and have its functions multiplied by 100X in capacity. May Bind up to 100 spirits to the Explorers map, Spirits bound to Map can travel any distance away from the map and it will be as though you are traveling through those areas mapping those areas as if you were there. -1 EXP for cheating
Compatibility detected! Your Grimoire of the Explorer and your Explorers have compatible information. You like to Synchronize them? Y/N
¡°I don¡¯t know! Are you going to shove another class down by throat if I do?¡± Tsar yelled. Afraid that he was going to set off some sort of chain reaction now that put his so helplessly deep in a hole of EXP needed that he would never get out. He sighed deeply and clicked the Y.
Synchronization complete Congratulations By synchronizing your Grimoire of The Explorer and your Explorers Map they both now have the same information in them!
Congratulations Your bond with the Grimoire of The Explorer has Reached Level 97 Bond Effect: +75 spirits may be bound to the Grimoire of the Explorer. Spirits bound to the Grimoire of the Explorer will share the effects of spirits bound to Explorers Map, additionally, they will be able to store and retrieve items from the Soul Vault.
Compatibility detected. In a never before seen three-way between two books and a map. Would you like to synchronize the Grimoire of the Doctor, The Explorer, and Explorers Map? Y/N
Tsar just sighed and accepted the thing. If it was going to force another class on him, so be it.
Synchronization complete Congratulations By synchronizing your Grimoire of The Explorer, The Doctor, and your Explorers Map they now have the same information in them!
Congratulations Your bond with the Grimoire of The Explorer has reached Level MAX Bond Effect lvl.MAX (The Explorer): +100 spirits may be bound to the Grimoire of the Explorer. Spirits bound to the Grimoire of the Explorer will share the effects of spirits bound to Explorers Map due to synchronicity, additionally, they will be able to store and retrieve items from the Soul Vault.
Congratulations Your bond with the Grimoire of the Doctor has reached level Max Bond Effect lvl.MAX (The Doctor): +100 spirits may be bound to the Grimoire of The Doctor. Spirits bound to the Grimoire of The Doctor will share the effects of spirits bound to Explorers Map due to synchronicity, additionally, they will be able to store and retrieve items from the Soul Vault.
Congratulations You have discovered a cascading effect System Bug that has now been corrected. For your contributions to the System in Identifying a potentially dangerous anomaly you will receive the following rewards. Rewards: Your max level restriction on the Class [Occultist] has been shifted from level 50 to level 75. +1 free skill token for each class. Title [Debugger] Title effect, -10% to EXP increase requirements from classes.
Wow that was insane. Tsar really had just caused some kind of feedback loop that could be considered a bug. Even though he¡¯d just gotten a massive increase in the amount of EXP he needed to gain Race levels, the new title was a good cushion. But the biggest bit of information in that little block of text was that Occultist had previously been capped at level fifty. Which means that the maximum reduction it could have given him was fifty percent. Now it could go all the way up to 75%. That meant that once he hit the level cap he¡¯d have 95% reduction in the increases to EXP requirements for leveling his race. So overall, today Tsar had experienced about a 10,000 EXP requirement increase to his race leveling. Meaning that now he would need 1,799,500 EXP to reach level 50. It wasn¡¯t as bad as it could be. He could have 0 reductions and need 41% more. Tsar really needed to check out the skill trees. The fact that he had a free skill from each of the trees was utterly fantastic. It was essentially the same as gaining ten levels in the class, except for without the stat points. So, he went to the latest class he had forced down his throat and checked out his options there.
Explorers Theme Music lvl.N/A Your soul becomes an instrument that is always going, always playing. Making the mundane less so and extraordinary even more so. Effect: Your Soul will emit music at all times. You cannot control the music, but it will always be appropriate for the situation you find yourself in. (Note: This counts as actively singing and playing an instrument at the same time. At all times. It also renders stealth impossible and will remove any Stealth oriented skills from your skill list. Purchase Y/N Explorers Whip lvl.N/A The Intrepid Explorer would be nothing without his trusty whip! Effect: You can select any whip in your possession and bind to a free attunement slot. Once bound the whip will merge with you body and can emerge at any time from any location on the body. The whip will be like a body part and can be completely controlled by thought alone. Purchase Y/N Wanderlust lvl.N/A You yearn to explore, to see new lands, to delve into hidden barrows rediscovering lost treasures. Effect: Induces a deep desire to wander the world, experience new things and discover treasures untold. Satisfying this desire will bring joy and meaning into your life. It will actually make you happy. Purchase Y/N
There was absolutely no way in all the hells in all the universes that Tsar would pick Wanderlust. Sure, it might make you happy with your life. But it also meant that he would never be happy unless he was doing those things. The whip one seemed pretty cool. He would need to find a really good whip for that though. Explorers Theme Music was the clear winner. That combined with his Rock Star skill would mean that he¡¯d gain a permanent +30 to his charisma stat. And it would probably make the skill level up. Meaning that that increase the gains even more. The only question that Tsar had about it was if was going to be annoying. Tsar purchased the Explorers Theme Music and a few seconds later soft thinking music seemed to resonate throughout the room in a way that was unobtrusive and pleasant. It made Tsar wonder how far the sound went. Next up was Skald.
Hell¡¯s Bells lvl.N/A Ask not for whom the bell tolls¡­ It tolls for thee. Effect: Music played by any instrument or sung using your voice during battle imposes a ¡®famine¡¯ debuff on enemies within range of your voice. Severity of debuff ranges from -30% resource regeneration rate to -90% resource regeneration rate. Applies ¡®famine bringer¡¯ buff to allies within range. Those with the ¡®Famine bringer¡¯ buff who land a hit on an enemy with the ¡®famine¡¯ debuff will apply a stacking effect on the ¡®Famine¡¯ debuff going all the way up to -900% resource regeneration. Purchase Y/N Where There¡¯s A Will lvl.N/A Your will be done. Effect: For any ally or friendly who can hear your music your Willpower stat will apply as a mental shield. Guarding them from telepathic, mind, and illusion magics. Enemies using or casting telepathic, mind, or illusion magics on your allies or friendlies that fail to beat your Willpower stat will instead suffer damage proportional to the amount of Mp used in their spell or attack. Purchase Y/N The Show Must Go On! Lvl.N/A Whatever it takes, you and your allies will carry on till the end. Effect: You and your allies who can hear you singing or playing music will gain the buff ¡®persistence¡¯ while under the effect of ¡®persistence¡¯ you and your allies will continue to be able to fight until your Hp pool falls to minus your Willpower value points. Purchase Y/N
He wanted all of them. He could eventually get them all. But he definitely wanted them all. If he was reading The Show Must Go On! Correctly, Persistence made it so that he and people who were fighting with him could lose all of their hp and then go negative all the way down whatever his willpower total was before they actually fell. It was kind of brutal if you thought about it. Being able to guard against mind attacks seemed incredibly useful. Though Tsar wasn¡¯t sure how prevalent mind magics were. Hells bells was essentially a total resource drain, if their resource regen stats were reduced to -900% then they would actually be losing 9x their resource regen stat, which would be a massive benefit. Tsar decided to go with [The Show Must Go On] in the end though. There was a possibility it could save the lives of his potential comrades someday.
[Enhanced Spirit Bonds lvl.N/A] Effect: Massively enhances the bond between spirits and items. Giving both the item and Spirit greater benefits from the bond. These benefits are entirely based on the spirit type and the item that they are bound to. [Spiritual Enlightenment lvl.N/A] Effect: Vastly enhances the effectiveness of [Commune With Spirit] allowing the shaman to learn more skills, and gain greater knowledge from Spirits. [Create Staff lvl.1] Effect: Allows the Shaman to create magical staffs. Cost = Variable based on quality of workmanship and quality of material used. Types: Determined by bound spirits.
[Mind Over Matter lvl.N/A] Effects: applies the Intelligence stat as a modifier to the strength stat. [Occultists Body lvl.N/A] Effect: Applies the Wisdom stat as a modifier to Constitution. [Occultists Soul lvl.N/A] Effect: Applies the Soul stat as a modifier to Perception.
[Sapiosexual lvl.N/A] Effect: Applies intelligence as a modifier to Charisma [Magnetic Personality lvl.N/A] Effect: Applies the Aura stat as a modifier to MP Regen. [Applied Sorcery lvl.N/A] Effect: Applies total Charisma to spell damage.
He was tired of looking at screens. Those were the skills he¡¯d ended up buying in his other three classes. He should have done it way sooner. But there it was. It was done now. The interesting thing he¡¯d noted was that overlapping stats that were modified were only modified by their base number. Otherwise, you¡¯d have an infinite feedback loop of ever-increasing stats. But even still the difference between before he¡¯d bought the skills and after were freaking insane. A lot of the other skill¡¯s he could have gotten were actually incredible. But Tsar had so much going on with his skills that he was forgetting to use some of them all the time. So, he¡¯d aimed to keep to more passive skills and focus in on what he did more clearly. Which was his Shaman stuff, his magic, and his combat mastery. Three areas of focus were good right? Speaking of magic. Tsar was suddenly feeling a lot less tired than had before, and he was dreadfully behind on reading and correcting stuff in his Grimoire of lighting, so he would do that until he felt tired enough to sleep. Chapter 9 - Dungeon City? Sounds kinky. First Dungeon Delve and secrets uncovered. Now, I know what you were thinking. Hell, Tsar was thinking it too. When he¡¯d heard the words fast travel network, he¡¯d immediately assumed that it meant teleportation. What it really was, was an interdimensional Autobahn, on steroids, with superpowers. Going through the rotating doors with the label Fast Travel over them led him to where he was now. Running faster than he¡¯d ever thought possible on a strange indoor highway through a tunnel filled with different lanes of traffic, foot, animal, vehicles, and straight up people just flying. Tsar found himself in a lane of people moving at his speed. Some people greeting each other and others ignoring everything besides heading towards their destination. There were signs and exits everywhere, but they were fairly easy to follow. His destination was dungeon city. From what he¡¯d seen on his and indeed on his minimap right now. The city was over fifteen thousand miles away. But using the fast travel network it was only about an hour¡¯s jog away. Tsar almost couldn¡¯t believe it when he ran down the Dungeon City exit. The place was significantly more crowded than Greenbriar and there was a long line to enter the main hall. But it was moving quickly. And soon he found himself in a Guild Hall that was identical to the one he¡¯d left, save for the fact that there were about four thousand people shuffling around through the hall, forming lines to the different doors. Tsar exited the guild hall and looked around at the vastly different city he found himself in now. This was a city. The streets were clean and paved in something that looked almost like asphalt was obviously something different. The buildings were huge. Easily 20 to 50 stories tall. He already had a detailed map of the place, and he knew where the Dungeons were located, so he headed towards the closest one which just so happened to be the Celestial Dungeon. Tsar honestly didn¡¯t know what to expect. He was honestly just going to enter the dungeon on his own, explore the first few floors to see what it was like, then probably head back to the Guild Hall to go into the ¡®Lobby¡¯ area where people who didn¡¯t have teams went to meet others and join up for group Contracts, and Dungeon runs. It only took him about fifteen minutes to arrive at the Celestial Dungeon¡¯s entrance. He found it confusing. The entrance wasn¡¯t like a decorated cave opening or a hole in the ground. It was like someone had taken one of the Stonehenge doorways as a baseline. Made it about ten times larger. But made it out of a pale white metal. Then, decided that it wasn¡¯t blingy enough, so they painstakingly attached diamonds the size of his fist to it in symmetrical rows. Then decided that it needed a square Stargate puddle inside it. There were hundreds of people lined up and walking into the event horizon while other groups of people emerged from the other side. Tsar wasn¡¯t exactly sure what he was seeing but it certainly seemed like another space bendy thing that the system seemed fond of. On the exit side of the giant portal were what appeared to be healers at the ready to heal injured and surrounding the thing were booths of kinds. One of the booths caught Tsar¡¯s eye in that it just had a big sign over it that said ¡°information¡± and there seemed to be no one going to it. Tsar walked over to the information booth and saw a very bored looking man sitting behind it looking like he couldn¡¯t wait for the day to be over. ¡°Hello there.¡± Tsar spoke as he approached the booth. The man behind the booth straitened up his posture and seemed to gather himself for a moment as if he wasn¡¯t quite sure what to say, but then he seemed to have collected his thoughts. ¡°Hello there yourself, are you looking for information on the Celestial Dungeon?¡± the man spoke, ¡°Well then you¡¯ve come to the right place. My name is Mark and if I can¡¯t answer your questions, I will be able to point you in the right direction to get the information you desire.¡± It seemed like a spiel that he was supposed to say more than anything, kind of like an HR person. ¡°Well¡­ I¡¯ve honestly never been into a dungeon. I have fought monsters out in the wild. But I don¡¯t know what to expect here. An idea of what I might find in there and such would be good.¡± Tsar spoke. ¡°Well, there are a few things about Dungeons in general that you should know then. It is a far different experience than fighting monsters in the wild. First off, there are traps. Traps are often more dangerous than the monsters themselves. On the first ten floors you can expect pitfalls, darts that shoot out of holes in the walls, and the occasional rock drops. The first ten floors honestly are not dangerous to anyone of silver or above guild rank, and only mildly dangerous to copper ranks. The danger curve of the Celestial Dungeon is linear in progression. Starting to grow up to about silver rank danger at around floor 15, then close to gold at 30, platinum 45, mithril 60, adamantium 75. Each floor is progressively more dangerous.¡± The man had this spiel memorized even though it seemed he hardly ever needed to tell it to anyone, ¡°Now the important thing to not about the difference between Dungeon monsters and wild monsters is that wild monster can be unpredictable, and vastly outperform their own tiers in terms of stats and skills. Dungeon monsters are more like a¡­ Play Script if you will. They have set patterns of behaviors and actions that they will take depending on what you do, and whether or not you draw aggro, aggro being the term we use to say, ¡®you¡¯ve got the monsters attention and now its going to try and kill you.¡¯ Depending on the individual monster and how deep you are in the dungeon Aggro range is different. The second big difference is that though the monster bleed and behave more or less like their wild counterparts. The moment that they are killed they burst into a cloud of rainbow-colored energy which coalesces into a Core. The Core will be of the type of monster that you slew.¡± The man was going to continue talking buts Tsar needed him to stop. So, he held up his hand. Tsar delved into Zen Meditation and tried to find the memory that what the guy¡­ Mark. Had just said reminded him of. After a few moments he found it. Radgar had said practically the same thing about Spirits! Tsar had actually killed a Wisps in his testing of his magic, he had the Wisp Cores from when they died. Exiting his meditation, Tsar pulled one of the Cores out of his Soul Vault and showed it to Mark. ¡°Are the cores like this?¡± he asked, showing the pea sized core to the man. Mark squinted at the core for a few moments before nodding, ¡°What you have there is a Wisp Core. They are good for being ground up and turned into a base for enchanting runes and such. You can find Wisps in practically any Dungeon but not many people bother with them. You need a lot of Cores for it to be worthwhile selling them. But yes, they are essentially the same thing. You would never be able to tell the difference between a wild wisp core and dungeon spawned one.¡± Tsar looked over at the dungeon then back at Mark. Was it possible that all of the Dungeon monsters were actually spirits? Would his Bind Spirit work on them? those were questions that he would answer once he got into the dungeon. There was another question that was bothering him though. How were so many people going into the dungeon at once? ¡°Ok this may seem like a weird question but is the Dungeon just enormous and allows tons of people inside at once or is it some kind of weird space magicky thinking going on?¡± he asked. ¡°Have you ever been to the Service Department?¡± Mark asked, Tsar smiled remembering the things that he¡¯d definitely not done in there as he nodded his head. Mark flashed him a knowing grin before continuing, ¡°Well you know how each store was actually many stores based off of the location you entered the Service Department from? It¡¯s a lot like that except based on parties, or individuals. Everyone enters into exactly the same area but are in a different dimension sort of. We call the instances. Once a dungeon develops to a certain size, they almost all become instanced.¡± ¡°Well thank you for the information, Mark. You¡¯ve given me a lot to think about. I¡¯ll be going now.¡± Tsar spoke. ¡°Wait¡­ Do you happen to know where that music is coming from? I should like to go and see the [Bard] who is playing it in person. It is beautiful.¡± Mark said. Tsar blinked; he¡¯d almost forgotten that he was just always playing music. It always fit the situation so it kind of just melded in with everything he was experiencing. The interesting thing is that the sound was completely non directional. It was just everywhere around him. ¡°Oh, sorry about that. Umm, its actually one of my classes¡¯ unique skills. It just plays music all around me at all times.¡± Tsar said. ¡°Well, that¡¯s an amazing skill. Tavern owners would pay you just to come and drink at their bars¡­ what Class is it? Maybe I could pick it up.¡± Mark asked with hope in his eyes. ¡°It¡¯s called [Intrepid Explorer], and the requirements were so ridiculously specific to my own life experiences that it¡¯s considered a similar class to Sorcerer, only even more rare to get.¡± Tsar explained. ¡°Well damn, I was just imagining being able to live a nice easy life never having to actually work. Just existing is something you could charge for.¡± Mark sighed. Tsar quickly headed over to the Dungeon entrance and joined the crowd of people entering it. He had some serious experimentation to do. Entering the Dungeon felt a lot like being teleported by Iggy. There was a massive sensation of magic happening around him, then he was in a room. A room made of white stone with repeating geometric patterns on the walls floor and ceiling. The light source was surprising. There were Wisps floating in little sconces at even intervals throughout the room. Other than that, the first room was devoid of anything in it. But the path forward was clear, a hallway that was brightly lit and seemed to curve just enough that he couldn¡¯t see the next room. Moving through the hallway Tsar remained cautious of potential traps. Though none presented themselves. He guessed that the first area was more of just an entryway, and he was currently headed to the actual first room. Upon seeing the first room Tsar was momentarily disoriented by the fact that it looked like he was emerging from a tunnel into the great outdoors. It was a field of perfectly green grass that looked manicured and maintained at exactly a certain height. There was path cutting straight through the field going perfectly straight until it hit an archway about a mile away that looked exactly like the Dungeon entrance. There were trees around that were all carbon copies of each other and seemed to be planted in exacting rows. Flowers were also peeking up around the area, but they too were all perfect copies of each other, in exacting arrangements. Everything was so uniform, so exacting, so neat that it was actually a little unnerving. Like he¡¯d entered a holy place that was not to be disturbed by imperfections. Each side of the field split by the pathway was a perfect mirror of the other side.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Then there were the Dungeon monsters. They were set up along the sides of the path in pairs, one on each side of the path, every fifty or so feet. They were all some sort of really pudgy, and frankly adorable rat creature that stood on their hind legs, their fur was golden, and they had big eyes to go with their chibi like heads, standing at about a foot and half tall when they were on their hind legs. Tsar had thought they were statues at first. But apparently his music had quite the range and drew aggro. Because suddenly the first 14 pairs, 24 monsters total, charged at him. They weren¡¯t fast, or strong. but they charged at him nonetheless. Tsar wanted to run an experiment or two but with a whole bunch of monsters all charging him he would need to wait until he¡¯d taken care of all but one of them. Which wasn¡¯t hard at all. As they ran at him, he just pulled one of Iggy¡¯s spears out of his Soul Vault and Skewered them one by one. They were basically regular animals, so it was pretty much just a chore. The moment he skewered them they burst into rainbow lights that coalesced into little pearl like beads. Once he was down to a single one of the creatures, he used analyze on it as he dodged its leaps and frankly pathetic attempts to hurt him. He was surprised to find that it was a [Cherubic Rat], race level 0 C+ creature. Its highest stats were Dex, Con, Vit, Hp Regen, and Cha. All of them sitting at 25 apiece. Though its health pool was huge for its Vit stat, sitting at 625Hp. Meaning that each point of Vit was worth 25 Hp for the little guys Now came the next experiment. He focused on the Cherubic Rat and cast Bind Spirit. The skill worked perfectly. Just like the description of the skill said¡­ Yeah, the skill specified something that Tsar hadn¡¯t really considered. The cost of the skill was point for point the targets resource pools. So, the second that Tsar cast the skill he felt a wrenching pain wash through his body as his Hp dropped by 625 points instantly, blood burst out of his eyes and mouth. He felt his stamina drain by a fraction, and his mana drained by the expected amount. The unexcpected severe pain and subsequent blood spattering all over the place dropped Tsar to the ground like a sack of potatoes. There were notifications flashing in the corner of his vision. But all Tsar could really do was groan. The pain had been unlike anything he¡¯d ever felt. He popped a health potion that he¡¯d in the Service Department and waited for it to heal him up. But even with his health topped off Tsar still had a headache from whatever had just happened. The Cherubic rat was now wandering around sniffing things and chewing on the grass nearby. He knew where it was and what it was doing even though he was currently curled up in a ball with his eyes closed. Just like he knew where the Wisp was and what it was doing at all times. He¡¯d gotten used to the feeling with the Wisp, but he didn¡¯t know why the rat was behaving like an animal now. Why was that? Tsar sat up and stared at the rat and it stopped what it was doing turning to look at him. Then the world stopped. Not Tsar, his rat, or his Wisp, but everything else froze. The music around shivered and switched to an eerie sounding tune. Then suddenly the being that he¡¯d first met in this universe appeared in front of him. ¡°Hello again Tsar Bomba. You¡¯ve been a very busy mortal.¡± The person said. Before Tsar had not had magical senses the last time, he¡¯d encountered this being. This time though. He felt it. The utter and all-encompassing power that was contained in the person was horrifying. And utterly beyond his comprehension. It was like trying to truly wrap your head around the amount of energy released by a supernova. ¡°In less than one mortal year, you have brought to the Systems attention. More bugs than have been encountered in past thousand years. Now you have discovered an Exploit the likes of which has not been found in the System since early in its inception. We applaud your hard work. Truly and sincerely.¡± Tsar mouth just hung open. He was utterly unable to speak now that he could catch a glimpse of the power that this thing that was talking to him had. ¡°Oh, and the answer to your question earlier is that it is behaving that way because that is what you subconsciously believe a rat should behave like. Anyway, I was sent here because you¡¯ve done something that the System has decided is too far out of balance. So much so that it is considered an exploit. The issue has been corrected in all future iterations of the Shaman class. However, it is impossible to alter your state directly without your permission. And the system doesn¡¯t really care to either.¡± That was the straw that broke the camel¡¯s back. ¡°Now that¡¯s just horseshit. I¡¯ve had two classes forced on me already. That¡¯s altering my state without permission.¡± Tsar spoke. ¡°No, you gave the system permission to, in those instances, by meeting the requirements. That is different than what I am talking about. Anyway, that is not important, the issue is resolved for any future individuals who take the class of Shaman. This Exploit will not be available to them, it will however, remain available to you. Use it wisely. The reason I have come to you, is that the System decided that notifications were not the way to convey everything. You see, by uncovering a truly broken exploit, you would have been awarded another title that reduced the increase in EXP requirements to your race level by a further -10%. But the System has flagged you as not eligible for further reductions aside from your occultist class level reductions. -95% is the highest that the System will allow reductions. This placed the System in a dilemma of sorts. A reward equivalent to the reduction must be given. I was instructed to tell you that because of this reward, you are no longer eligible for classes below the Legendary classification that mortals have given those kinds of classes. At a minimum your next class will be Legendary, if not higher. More than likely, it will be at least Mythic, on the mortal scale though.¡± The person spoke. ¡°I kind of feel like all of that could have pretty easily been explained in a little blue box.¡± Tsar pointed out, and for the first time he saw the person smile. ¡°Certain requirements have loopholes that the System can take advantage of¡­ for its own amusement of course.¡± The person said before disappearing. The world unfroze a moment later leaving Tsar standing there feeling goosebumps rising on his flesh. The system wanted to give him some kind of class that had a requirement for meeting that being in some way. Tsar was afraid to look at his notification now. He had a bad feeling about it. But¡­ he had to know.
Congratulations By finding a broken mechanic in your class and exploiting it, You have been awarded [Redacted] You have been awarded the Title: [Boundary Breaker] Effect: All sources of regeneration have had their decimal points moved to the right by one.
Congratulations You have bound the Dungeon Creature [Cherubic Rat (C+)] Race level 0
Congratulations You have killed 23x [Cherubic Rat (C+)] +23 EXP
He breathed out a sigh of relief, nothing crazy. Just a new title and some EXP. But the effect of the new Title alone was huge. It meant that each point in his regen stats counted as a whole 1 point per hour of regeneration. Which meant that he now had 3,469 mana regen per hour and 1,640 hp per hour. That meant that with just his stats Tsar¡¯s mana regen was nearly at 1 mana per second. And after checking, Tsar noticed that the title applied its effect not only to his stats but the souls in his soul well too. Meaning that he was now getting an additional 74.5 regen to all resources per hour. When the effect of Greater Mana siphon was applied on top of that he was regening mana at 88.57 mana per minute or just shy 1.5 mana per second. It was insane! How had binding the Cherubic Rat been an exploit that was considered more unbalanced than shooting his resource regen rate with a steroid injection? Tsar was about to use analyze on the rat when he realized that there was a new icon in his vision. Set unobtrusively just under where the Party interface area would be located. He clicked it and his eyes went wide. ¡°Yeah, that is beyond broken. Even if normally you¡¯d only be able to have four.¡± He muttered to himself as he took in the Rat¡¯s Stat Sheet,
Name: ??? Race: Dungeon Forged Cherubic Rat(C+) Race Level: 0/350 [Racial bonus: none] Bond Bonus: Gain Shaman¡¯s Unlocked Stats as a modifier to the corresponding stat. Additionally Base regeneration rates of resources are based on the Shaman¡¯s base plus modifiers. Unlocked all Stats that the shaman has access to.
Strength: 25(752)+727 from bond Dexterity: 25(757)+722 from bond Constitution: 25(752)+727 from bond Toughness: 25(737)+712 from bond Fortitude: 25(737)+712 from bond HP Regen: 25(737)+712 from bond Vitality: 25(747)+722 from bond Lifespan: 25(741)+716 from bond Attributes Intelligence: 25(1,072)+1,047 from bond Wisdom: 25(1,072)+1,047 from bond Perception: 25(921)+896 from bond Charisma: 25(1,023)+998 from bond Willpower: 25(2,571)+2,546 from bond MP Regen: 25(737)+712 from bond MP Capacity: 25(737)+712 from bond Soul: 25(737)+712 from bond See Next Page 1 of ??? Resource Pools [Sp 3,760/3760] 12.28spm [Hp 18,675/18,675] 122.8hpm [Mp 3685/3685] 12.28mpm (Note: Sp regeneration is based mana consumption. Dungeon Forged subsist on mana alone.)
Skills [Celestial Vitality lvl.N/A] [Celestial Regeneration lvl.N/A] [Bite lvl.1] [Tackle lvl.1] Spells N/A
Yup, it was completely and utterly broken. The little rat was a tank now. And all Tsar had to do was suffer a little pain. Now he had his very own Pok¨¦mon that would definitely get stronger than he was. It could level up separately from himself. It didn¡¯t have classes as a control for how quickly it could gain exp. He could probably teach it new skills. And already he¡¯d learned a bit more about celestial creatures. It¡¯s two, Level N/A, skills were racial traits that applied to celestials. Celestial Vitality made it so that each point in Vit was worth 25 points. While Celestial Regeneration took your total hp regen and moved the decimal to the right. And because Tsar¡¯s modifiers had just been moved it was like the rat got it moved over by two. Meaning that the rat had the equivalent of 7,370 hp regen per hour! The next thing that Tsar noticed was that he was stuck with this bond. Unlike the with the Wisp. And he was unsure what would happen if the rat was killed. It would probably free up the slot. But he didn¡¯t want to test that. For now, he dismissed his bond with the Wisp. He really didn¡¯t need it and now he had a replacement. The moment he ripped the bond away from the wisp it exploded and condensed down into an abnormally large Wisp Core. About the size of a Golf ball. Probably because of the excess mana. But back to the Rat. Tsar¡¯s question about why the rat was acting like a rat had been answered, it was because he thought it should. Oh, Tsar was so going to collect one of each of the different types from the different Dungeons. He already had a Celestial rat. Maybe he should bind it to the Grimoire of Lightning to give it spells? He really thought about that one. But this thing was built to be a tank. Health and health regen. It didn¡¯t have a huge mana pool. Maybe the Infernal creatures had big mana pools and Celestials has big health pools? Anyway, he would find out. But first he was going to power level his little rat here in the dungeon he¡¯d stolen it from. Chapter 10 Power Leveling Chibi The first thing that Tsar did was name the rat Chibi. Then he experimented with its range. The Wisp for some reason could go about thirty feet away from Tsar before it kind of just stopped doing anything. Chibi was different. Chibi could go as far as Tsar¡¯s music reached. Which as best he could tell was about 700 feet. The absolute uniformity of the celestial dungeons first room made it fairly easy to estimate the distance based on the aggro range of Chibi¡¯s former brethren. Chibi now outclassed the other Cherubic Rats by a tremendous margin. Tsar didn¡¯t even need to lift a finger as Chibi methodically murdered his former friends with prejudice. Tsar was keeping track of his EXP notifications. Every rat that was killed was giving him 1 EXP. But Chibi was getting 10 EXP for every rat killed. Meaning that they would need to kill 35 rats per level for Chibi. That wasn¡¯t a huge issue as there were exactly 100 rats in the first room of the first floor of this dungeon. Meaning that Chibi managed to reach level 2 and received +10 total to all his stats. 5 per level to all of its unlocked stats. Chibi¡¯s leveling mechanics were exactly the same as any other C+ Tier life form. By the time he got Chibi to level 30 Chibi¡¯s stats would be 150 pints higher than when he¡¯d first gotten him. Was Tsar going to evolve the rat right away? No. He¡¯d be taking this rat down a Lateral evolution chain that would turn it into an absolute beast. Another thing that Tsar tested was whether or not there was a respawn mechanic in the Dungeon. So, he¡¯d settled in in the middle of the room with his Grimoire of Lightning and started working on it some more. There was a reason why he hadn¡¯t gotten very far the night before. He¡¯d skimmed through the very first area of the book as he always did when something struck him. A couple of Ideas for different experiments to see how electricity and mana interacted had suddenly grabbed his attention. He¡¯d started experimenting generating tiny amounts of electricity using his mana and playing with different phenomena to understand it more. He was on to something, something that would make everything even better as he continued. He was sure of it. He lost track of time doing experiments writing down the results and then fixing them as he went along. Two hours later the rats in the room respawned and Chibi took about ten minutes to slaughter them all. Gaining a couple more levels. There was a respawn mechanic. This room represented 1000 EXP for Chibi every two hours. It was highly inefficient. But also, good to know. Another good thing to know was that once he left the room he couldn¡¯t go back. If he tried, he got a message asking if he would like to leave the dungeon. The next room was basically the same thing as the first room, but in the place of the rats there were [Celestial Horned Rabbits]. Tsar was very tempted to take one of the rabbits as another bond but stopped himself. Before he bonded anything else he wanted to get the weakest creatures from each of the Dungeons and see what they all had in terms of unique skills like the celestials did. Then he would design a team of creatures based on their strengths and weaknesses. Tsar didn¡¯t know this, but he could have just gotten a copy of the book ¡®Monsters of the Dungeons¡¯ and read through it to figure out the answers to these questions. Everything he could have hoped to discover about the monsters, and more was available quite easily, but he didn¡¯t know because he hadn¡¯t asked. Each room was exactly the same as the last. The only differences being the creatures that occupied them. the fifth room was the only one that was different. Instead of a portal to the next room there was a staircase going down which then led to another portal into the second floor. Chibi had already reached level 16 and was halfway to level 17 already. Meanwhile Tsar had gained a total of 599 EXP during the whole shebang. The second floor was a carbon copy of the first floor except that the base stats of the monsters had risen by 20. If that trend continued, then the average base stats at floor Ten would be 205 which sounded right for copper Tier difficulty. Floor fifteen was supposed to be where it started being silver ranked difficulty, which also seemed right if the stats of the monsters progressed by 20 per floor descended. But he wondered if it was different for the different Tiers of creatures. If the C+ tier monsters were going up by 20, would the B Tiers go up by 30? The Dungeon was meant for teams of five or six and the encounters were spaced far enough apart that it didn¡¯t seem unreasonable. Progressing through the second floor Chibi murdered everything up to the entrance to the third floor he was level thirty already and banking 260 EXP. Tsar was relieved to see that he indeed did get to pick whether it evolved and could choose its evolution. If the creatures on the next floor gave the same exp as these ones, then Chibi would be ready to evolve laterally by the time he reached the first room of the fifth floor. Sure enough, thirty-five creatures killed on the fifth floor by Chibi had the lateral evolution option pop up for him. The options, however, were weird. [Dungeon Forged Jackalope], [Dungeon Forged Celestial Cock], [Dungeon Forged Celestial Mouse], [Dungeon Forged Celestial Spider]. And those were just some of the options. The options were all over the place! But they all seemed geared towards a Celestial version of regular animals, although Tsar was pretty sure Jackalopes were made up. Why was his minion getting all kinds of awesome crazy different options when he only got frogs or toads? Why couldn¡¯t he have become a spider? Or a snake? That was one of the options, Celestial Snake. He was going to save the Snake one for last. Snakes were either venomous or constrictors. Having a Constrictor as a tank may very well be the way to go. Anyway, Chibi got to evolve into a spider first. Mainly because spiders are creepy, and he wanted to get the spider faze out of the way. Watching something undergo evolution for the first time was an interesting experience. Chibi instantly collapsed on the spot, then slowly morphed into a silvery spider that actually looked more like a robot spider than an actual one. Once the transformation was complete Chibi got up as if nothing had happened. Then scuttled around like he was looking for food. Tsar had Chibi run around and do a bunch of jumps, had him attack the trees, and was horrified by how terrifyingly strong the spider was. At an effective 912 strength the thing was able to rip the trees right out of the ground. It would have been enormous for a spider back on earth. Its main body was about the size of a chihuahua but with the legs, Chibi was almost four feet wide. Tsar wanted to hurry and get the Chibi to not be a spider anymore. He didn¡¯t like it. He would go with the mouse option next. Yes, the mouse option would be much better. Really anything that didn¡¯t have eight legs would be preferable. Sighing to himself Tsar checked Chibi¡¯s Stat page to see what had changed.
Name: Chibi Race: Dungeon Forged Celestial Spider(C+) Race Level: 0 0/350 Banked exp 0 [Racial bonus: none] Bond Bonus: Gain Shaman¡¯s Unlocked Stats as a modifier to the corresponding stat. Additionally Base regeneration rates of resources are based on the Shaman¡¯s base plus modifiers. Unlocked all Stats that the shaman has access to.
Strength: 185(912)+727 from bond Dexterity: 185(907)+722 from bond Constitution: 185(912)+727 from bond Toughness: 185(897)+712 from bond Fortitude: 185(897)+712 from bond HP Regen: 185(897)+712 from bond Vitality: 185(907)+722 from bond Lifespan: 185(901)+716 from bond Attributes Intelligence: 185(1,232)+1,047 from bond Wisdom: 185(1,232)+1,047 from bond Perception: 185(1081)+896 from bond Charisma: 185(1,183)+998 from bond Willpower: 185(2,731)+2,546 from bond MP Regen: 185(897)+712 from bond MP Capacity: 185(897)+712 from bond Soul: 185(897)+712 from bond See Next Page 1 of ??? Resource Pools [Sp 4,560/4,560] 14.95spm [Hp 22,675/22,675] 149.5hpm [Mp 4,485/4,485] 14.95mpmThis tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. (Note: Sp regeneration is based mana consumption. Dungeon Forged subsist on mana alone.)
Skills [Celestial Vitality lvl.N/A] [Celestial Regeneration lvl.N/A] [Spider Silk lvl.N/A] [Venomous Bite lvl.4] [Tackle lvl.5] Spells N/A
The new skill Spider Silk was interesting, but Chibi would be losing it when he evolved. It required the race to have the physical capacity to use it. So that was out. But the Venomous Bite was an upgrade from Bite, and it would stay so that was a bonus. Tsar wondered how that worked but decided not to question how a mouse might be able to have venom but not silk. Anyways, it was time to commit horrifying mass slaughter beside a spider. +++ 3 evolutions later and floor fifteen. Chibi was an absolute monster. He¡¯d gained 480 stat points in everything and literally nothing could stand before the now Mighty Celestial Cock. As the name suggested he was a rooster now and because of his frighteningly high stats he could easily fly with those majestic wings. However, Tsar had hit a roadblock. Kind of. It was something that made sense in an arbitrary kind of way but it was still a mite bit frustrating.
Name: Chibi Race: Dungeon Forged Celestial Cock(C+) Race Level: 9 ( Base Stats may not Exceed base stats of Shaman banking EXP until Shaman meets requirements.) Banked exp 5000 [Racial bonus: none] Bond Bonus: Gain Shaman¡¯s Unlocked Stats as a modifier to the corresponding stat. Additionally Base regeneration rates of resources are based on the Shaman¡¯s base plus modifiers. Unlocked all Stats that the shaman has access to.
Strength: 710(1,437)+727 from bond Dexterity: 710(1,432)+722 from bond Constitution: 710(1,437)+727 from bond Toughness: 710(1,422)+712 from bond Fortitude: 710(1,422)+712 from bond HP Regen: 710(1,422)+712 from bond Vitality: 710(1,432)+722 from bond Lifespan: 710(1426)+716 from bond Attributes Intelligence: 710(1,757)+1,047 from bond Wisdom: 710(1,757)+1,047 from bond Perception: 710(1,606)+896 from bond Charisma: 710(1,708)+998 from bond Willpower: 710(3,256)+2,546 from bond MP Regen: 710(1,422)+712 from bond MP Capacity: 710(1,422)+712 from bond Soul: 710(1,422)+712 from bond See Next Page 1 of ??? Resource Pools [Sp 7.185/7,185] 23.7spm [Hp 35,800/35,800] 237hpm [Mp 7,110/7,110] 23.7mpm (Note: Sp regeneration is based mana consumption. Dungeon Forged subsist on mana alone.)
Skills [Celestial Vitality lvl.N/A] [Celestial Regeneration lvl.N/A] [Natural Weaponry lvl.N/A] [Natural Armor lvl.N/A] [Venomous Bite lvl.4] [Tackle lvl.5] [Evasive Movement lvl.3] Spells N/A
Chibi had gotten ridiculously powerful very quickly. But he was stuck at level 9 because leveling anymore would put his base stats higher than some of Tsar¡¯s. Still, most of Chibi¡¯s stats would be considered high gold rank with the modifiers from the bond. And then another thing had happened that would stall progress even further. At least for Tsar.
Congratulations You have killed 5,000 creatures below your tier. Reward There is no reward¡­ it¡¯s a penalty. You will never again receive EXP for killing a creature below your tier. Pick on someone your own size you bully!
So, he¡¯d needed to get down to a floor where the creatures started giving EXP for him again. Honestly, he¡¯d only been in the dungeon for about six hours. And in that time, he¡¯d gained an ally that was technically more powerful than him now. He knew that he wouldn¡¯t want to tangle with Chibi. His two new skills came from when he became a tortoise, because Tsar thought it would be funny. And from his current evolution. Natural Weaponry added his total strength as extra damage dealt by claw, fang, beak¡­ Whatever an animal would use as a weapon it got extra damage. Natural Armor added his toughness value to feathers, scales, hide, shell, whatever it may be that acts as a defense, as a sort of ablative effect, like the soak mechanic in dnd. If whatever hit him in an armored location wouldn¡¯t have 1422 damage it just bounces off him. But momentum is still transferred, and he could still be hurt even if the damage threshold wasn¡¯t met, but it was a significant increase to his tankyness. But just grinding Chibi¡¯s level wasn¡¯t the only thing he¡¯d been doing. He¡¯d been doing research on electricity for his Grimoire of Lightning. And he¡¯d gone ahead and made a Talisman of spirit holding. It was now dangling on his chain along with his Talisman of Warding. Its effect was simple, it had seven spirit slots, one of them needed to be occupied at all times, while the other six were [storage slots]. The talisman was a way for a Shaman to keep Spirits on his person. Spirits stored within could be used as backup mana using mana transfer, and the spirits could be released at any given time. It was essentially supposed to be a way for the shaman to keep a stock of wild spirits to drain without having to use up attunement slots. The first Slot needed a spirit to maintain the talisman in its form and could not be removed from the Talisman once bound to it.
Owl Talisman of Spirit Holding Material quality: (Legendary) Workmanship quality: Masterwork Description: A Talisman depicting an owl in flight created by the grandmaster woodworker Iggy, The World Tree Sapling. Completed by the Shaman Tsar Bomba. Effects: +1 Spirit slot. +6 Spirit Storage slots for Spirits. 6 Spirit Storage slots available Spirit Slot Effect: Spirit [Celestial Marmot] This amulet has 100/100 charges of the effect [Celestial Regeneration]. When activated, the wearer gains the Buff ¡®Celestial Regeneration¡¯ which moves the decimal point in the hp regen stat to the right by 1 for 1 hour. Charges expended will replenish by 1 for every 24 hours passed.
He¡¯d made the Talisman on the first floor using a Celestial Marmot. Those things had been so god¡¯s damned adorable that Tsar had almost bound one to himself just to keep it. Now it was the spirit maintaining his spirit holding talisman and because of his new Shaman skill Enhanced Spirit Bonds it even gave charges of a selfheal that would drastically increase hp regen for an hour at a time. Which would basically put Tsar¡¯s regen at 16,400 points regenerated an hour. Tsar wished he had the same skill that Celestials seemed to be born with. If he did then his natural hp regen right now would be 16,400 per hour and this talisman would shift it over to 164,000 an hour when in use, or 45 hp per second. Which would be broken admittedly, but it was still something he wanted. And Tsar was pretty sure that people like Radgar already had Regen factors even higher than that, He had seen Radgar put a fucking sword through his own skull once just to prove a point. Wishful thinking aside, Tsar didn¡¯t know if he should continue deeper into the Dungeon, or head out and go to the other dungeons to fill out his roster of Tali¡¯Mon now¡­ You know the six monsters he put in his talisman? It worked with Chibi. When he willed it, Chibi would burst into a cloud of rainbow-colored lights which would rush to the talisman and disappear inside of it. Then he could just, Will, him back out and the process reversed. So, Tali¡¯Mon¡­ He was not¡­ I repeat Not, just trying to live out a childhood dream¡­ But he already had a chicken¡­ all he needed was a bipedal turtle, a really big bird, some kind of amphibious creature, a dragon, and a fairy and his roster would be set¡­ ok maybe he was trying to recreate something. But hey a man, er, frogman had to have some kind of failings. Couldn¡¯t be too perfect. It was too bad he didn¡¯t have Seven slots in the Talisman. Then he could store one of each from The Big Seven. But honestly Tsar didn¡¯t want to fill up with too many Attunement Slots with just monsters. The five more would leave him with 6 Slots remaining, And Tsar was hoping he¡¯d find a few more things like the Explorers Map that could add tons of functionality to his build. Speaking of, He really needed to add spirits to the Explorers Map, and the Grimoires of The Explorer and The Doctor. For those Tsar wanted to just use Wisps. They were ideal for the functionalities provided. They were fast, could remain mostly invisible, at least to those without mana senses, and could operate 24/7 without rest. Which hopefully would mean that Tsar could use them as an easy EXP harvester for his Intrepid Explorer Class which seemed to receive EXP for him going places and seeing new things. If the Wisps counted as him going places, then it stood to reason that he¡¯d be gaining EXP like mad if he had a total of 300 Spirits exploring the world for him. And he would even be able to use 200 of them to harvest things and deposit items from his Soul Vault at a distance. Which might have actually solved one of the problems in returning to save Radgar. All he needed to do now was get ahold of a Class removal item and he might be able to just deliver it without having to step foot in the swamp¡­ Hopefully it was that easy. Tsar had a feeling that it would be anything but. The way that this world worked seemed geared towards taking its simplistic mechanics and making it harder than it had to be. Conveniently there happened to be literally thousands of Wisps in the Dungeon. He wasn¡¯t going to spend all day binding all three hundred right now. But he did bind ten of them to the Grimoire of the Explorer and begin testing them. Yup, his plan for a remote delivery and collection service was shot down right off the bat. Anywhere that was within range of his music was where the Spirits could use his Soul Vault, which made him think that the range of the music was based either on his Soul stat or his Aura Stat. He couldn¡¯t be sure which. It was still a useful function if he kept a whole bunch of them around, but his goal was to send them off to explore. Which was another experiment he needed to run. Sending one of the Wisps to the exit he had it go invisible and ordered it to leave the Dungeon and go off exploring. It worked, and the Wisp popped through the portal, started to move, then was promptly destroyed by a mage nearby. Tsar had been watching through his minimap. And he felt indignance rise up in his chest. He promptly exited the Dungeon to confront the stupid mage, the other nine wisps somehow safely inhabiting the Grimoire of the Explorer in a similar fashion to his Spirit holding talisman. Chibi flashed into the Talisman just before Tsar exited the Dungeon.