He hadn’t been sure if the Fateful Reposition acquisition was going to upgrade his existing title or go into the new one. It seemed like the system was leaning heavily towards the importance of earned skills versus standard ones.
Title: Underage Earned Ability Development (IV) - Upgradable - Grants 1 free attribute point at every class level.
- Awarded for: Developing sufficient Earned Abilities to earn eight points from scratch.
- Each uniquely created [Redacted #1], Earned Skill, [Redacted #3]. [Redacted #4] will award points equal to the tier level squared. This means the following:
- A tier 1 equivalent ability contributes 1 point.
- A tier 2 equivalent ability contributes 4 points.
- A tier 3 equivalent ability contributes 9 points, and so on.
- No double counting of skill points may take place.
- Eligible abilities must be wholly created.
- Each uniquely created [Redacted #1], Earned Skill, [Redacted #3]. [Redacted #4] will award points equal to the tier level squared. This means the following:
- Legendary Title: Competition Rank: 4, Experience: NA. Ranking Points – NA.
The language was nearly identical to the other titles he had received, but the subtle differences caught his attention. The first one was the one attribute per class level it gave him. Unlike the skill and spell version of the title that had kicked in after he had acquired four and eight points respectively, this one triggered with only two earned points. That meant that a single tier-two earned skill would have gifted him two levels of the title, and his tier-four skill had catapulted him to the fourth level of the upgrade.
He was also intrigued by the [Redacted] information.
While waiting for his mana to regenerate to keep working on Briana, Tom pondered what they could refer to. Earned Spell was obviously one of the missing pieces, but he wondered what that was going to look like in the real world. Also, were the earned spells better than the normal ones? To get awarded one, did you have to keep practicing magic and use it to kill stuff without ever making a perfect cast like Tom did? Those who benefited from trainers, did they have to demonstrate their abilities to receive it from the system?
He could see Earned Spells applying logic like that, and could also see how it could work in practice out in the wider Existentia. Without an access to a trainer or wire frame diagrams and fate, how could a normal person learn a spell? There were animals that formed spells in the wild. They could be observed and mimicked. Not perfectly, though, and that was going to leave the budding mage with a hacked, reduced version, one that gave them power, but one that would be near-impossible to polish to perfection. Without a guidance from an external source, perfecting the spell would be impossible for most people. So, what could they do?
He guessed the answer was in this title: they would cast it in a raw form. Do that enough, and you would get the spell with an earned status. However, from what he knew about the system, the process wasn’t going to be easy. There would be conditions in place – say, cast it at eighty percent efficiency a thousand times. Maybe they would even have to use it to save their own life a couple times, or possibly just blow themselves up a little. Unfortunately, he could imagine the prerequisite being specified as something like ‘experience ten catastrophic failures while trying to cast the spell that resulted in bodily injury’.
But there wasn’t just the one unknown category - there were three. What else could it be? He thought about the mechanisms of advancement and fighting that he was aware of. There were bloodlines, domains, body manipulation, and, he guessed, gestalts that fused the physical and the magical state. The unknowns could be earned outcomes relating to any of them.
“Nope, not a current problem,” he whispered to himself and the sleeping Briana. He was in the realm of pure speculation, so there was no point considering things further. Just having had his eyes opened, however, was valuable enough.
It was a future advantage, something to pursue once he had more information.
Knowledge that could very well become a source of growth and power, especially if it allowed him to upgrade the title and let him gain another free attribute point per class level.
He smiled.
The simple fact was that he was sitting on a goldmine of resources to help him. The orphanage had been set up to give the kids an edge. He was sure someone among humanity had earned abilities, and they would have had an input into the build and rule-set of the orphanage. They would have left clues, breadcrumbs, for an ambitious reincarnator to follow. His job was to keep an open mind and focus on the opportunities it offered. If there was something there that he didn’t understand, that was a reason to study it harder. A challenge to comprehend it more completely, because it might relate to one of these unknowns, and another tier-four earned ability would give him another attribute point per level, which by itself was sufficient reward. The fact that the earned abilities, from what he could see, were stronger than normal ones, was an excellent motivation to pursue them, and the title implications were just gravy.
It was a good plan. Also, Kang bore careful watching. His earned skill had been tier-two, which meant he had gotten this title as well. He knew about the [redacted], and, as he had shown by adapting the shadow spell so easily, he was clever. If he did anything ridiculous, Tom would have to copy him.
There were a lot of positives with the recent run.
But….
He shot a sad look at Briana, then scrunched the pieces of paper up and tossed them away. The ball landed, and flames burst out of it. For a pleasing few seconds the flames danced, and then they reduced as the paper went from white, to orange, to glowing red to grey, then finally to a black shell that held the original shape of the paper for another five seconds before it collapsed into ash and then nothing.
There was not even a smidge of dust where it had landed.
The last run through the floor had been beneficial, but also not.
His new skill was a banger, but he didn’t know how often it was going to trigger in combat. If he could force it to activate for every second move that had a different power profile to an ability that could only be activated once per combat… What it could do with the manual trigger already made it his most powerful ability, so he wasn’t complaining, but he was just unsure about how much he should have been celebrating.
His eyes dropped to the pain relief wireframes written with precision on the paper Adam had created. That was a spell he needed to learn again, because he was going to be using it a lot going forward. He glanced at Briana, and remembered what his last diagnosis had told him. He was going to be using it every ten minutes until they were out of here, as it was the only way she was going to be able to function.
The next day, after Briana has been put through her paces for twenty minutes, they lined up to enter the floor once more.
Briana was pale, and the fluidity of her movements was noticeably restricted. Eloise was hovering around her protectively, and Tom felt useless. Her wound needed continual maintenance to prevent deterioration. The petrification energy was like cancer. His treatment could delay the spread, but not cure her. Very quickly, he explained the situation.
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“Two weeks? Are you sure?” Kang asked.
“Before her evasive capabilities are materially impacted, yes. She’s not going to drop dead at that point, but that’s our timeline.”
“So, that’s the number; because, if we’re still here, we have no choice but to keep fighting.” His finger stabbed at the door that led to the trial proper.
“That’s why I said two weeks instead of six.”
“Well, it is what it is. We have our challenge now. We need to meet it. Now, Tom, are you too tired to do this today?”
“I’ll be fine.” Tom told him.
“Are you sure? I know you got no sleep.”
“I got some.”
“Next to none,” Kang said smoothly. “Every time I stirred you were either with Briana or practicing with your spear, and Adam confirmed as much when I asked.”
“I’ll be fine. I can go a night without sleep. I’ve been doing it at the orphanage for a while.”
“But we’re going into a life-or-death situation.”
“I said I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. If you’re sure enough to risk the girls’ lives, I’ll trust you.”
“If I could have slept more, I would have, but I was monitoring her and I couldn’t sleep, so I kept myself occupied.”
Kang nodded. “You were worried.”
Tom only shrugged in a motion that said a lot about his emotional state, and it wasn’t ambivalence.
“That’s perfectly normal,” Kang scratched his hair. “But sleep’s important.”
“I know.”
“Don’t jump on me. I was just saying that, if it becomes a problem, there’s options. Adam can supply a potion to force sleep. It even stops nightmares.”
From the way he was talking, it was clear that Kang was relating a firsthand experience.
“Can I get it in two-hour doses?” he called out; he didn’t want to leave her issue unattended for longer than that.
Yes.
“I’ll use them tonight. Now, are we going to fight?”
No one was happy about it, but they understood the need. Together they entered the hellhole of light. They were on a proper timer now. The girls wore their blackout goggles to make the exploration more palatable, but Tom wasn’t going to do the same because of the risk it entailed. Even the girls were expected to remove them for each and every fight.
Kang fought with brutal intensity and threw himself into each encounter with a greater willingness to take an injury. Tom’s healing load didn’t increase, but, after most fights, Kang still stepped away injured enough to require a full ten-mana spell to put himself back together. He seemed to know Tom’s capabilities down to the mana point, and used all the available free Touch Heal capacity to quicken the battles up. Every time all ten were required, and usually not a point more - at least, when it came to the major injuries; the minor stuff he left alone at Kang’s urgings.
The new Kang made a short work of everything, and it felt like they were speedrunning the floor.
“Adam?” Kang demanded as they exited to have lunch.
You have cleared eighty-two percent.
“We finish this today.” Kang told them.
Tom nodded agreement. It would be challenging, but, with their faster clear speed, it would only be a four-hour session instead of a three-hour one, assuming that fighting the boss was not going to be overly time-consuming.
His estimates were off. Five, almost six hours later, they gathered outside the boss’ room. The door to it had not opened until they had killed everything else on the level. Chasing down the last stragglers had taken a lot of time.
“What are we facing?” Tom asked.
Kang stood still with his eyes black as midnight as he scanned the room that Tom could barely look into. However, he had seen enough to know that it was tiny compared to every other one they had gone through. It was only slightly larger than the domed, linking tunnels between the open spaces. “A giant light statue. It’s big and nasty.”
“Can you kill it?”
Kang shrugged. “We’ll see, but, provided speed hasn’t fully scaled to match the size, I’ll be okay.”
“So, not unless fate’s playing funny buggers to help you even further?”
“If fate’s failed, we were never going to beat this trial. We might as well assume that it has worked. For this setup, though, I’m not worried about the boss. It’s the adds that concern me. There are a full eight ranged and two dozen stick fighters.”
“I suppose my job is to blow up the ranged ones?”
“Yes. Let me explain further.” He then pushed them away from the doorway. “Do you have a pen and paper?”
With a thought, he manifested what he was after, and Kang sketched down the positioning of all the monsters in the room. There were no terrain features they were going to have to worry about. The boss room was devoid of the squat, glittering fountain-like things that had filled the other rooms and acted as ambush locations. Then, with the layout having been specified, Kang detailed his plan.
“Let me get this straight,” Tom responded with incredulity. “You want me to hit the left side with my ranged lightning attacks while sprinting at those on the right, and use Spark to defeat them? The things that have a lethal range attack and blow up when they die with enough force to knock us off our feet at ten metres… You want me to charge them and destroy them in a melee range? That’s your plan?”
“Yes, I did the maths. This is the cheapest way to kill all of them.”
Tom shook his head. “You know how much they explode. Even using a bolt on one of them is iffy. For Spark, I need to be within three metres. That’s way too close.”
Kang looked a little guilty. “We’ve never faced multiple ranged ones. If they stagger, their attacks… or, even worse, they do a blanket a coordinated strike, and people are going to die. I doubt I’ll be able to dodge something like that, and I can guarantee the girls have no chance. We have to eliminate them before they target us.”
“I’m not sure I can kill eight enemies that quickly.”
“You don’t have to. That’s not what I’m saying. Just aim to take most of them out before the three seconds are up,” Kang said in exasperation. “Then you’ll have the undivided attention of the remaining ones, and they’ll target you. That’s great, because, out of the two of us, you’re the most likely to survive.”
“Maybe so.”
“There’s no maybe. You are. With your danger sense advantage and with a movement skill as strong as mine, you’re a much better target.”
Tom could have disputed that, but he didn’t. Kang knew that, if Tom died here, none of the others were making it out, while the reverse didn’t apply. He was putting him in this role because he thought Tom was, by far, the best one to fill it. While Fateful Repositioning was untested, Tom suspected he was right. Tom taunting out the ranged attacks was the right call.
“Tom, I’m not trying to bullshit you here. Just like you, I’ve had long chats with Adam. I don’t see any other choice here. The boss’ room resets if even one of us leaves. We have eight ranged ones to kill, and you’re both mana- and speed cast-limited. Can you throw eight javelins that quickly?
Tom shook his head.
“Even if you could cast fast enough, do you have the mana?”
It was a rhetorical question, and they both knew it.
They were not going into this fight blind. They knew the amount of mana required by each spell to ignite the explosion. It was ten for a Javelin, thirteen for an Extended Bolt, and sixteen for a simple Bolt. They didn’t know for sure, but Spark, due to being under his direct control instead of remote, should be more efficient again. In a burst ranged attack, he had the mana reserves to blow up, at most, six of them, not the eight that were in the room. They were certain the monsters were smart enough not to group together and allow them to ignite one and destroy all of them by a chain of explosions, too.
“You’re going to have to rely on Spark, then. It can do it, can’t it?”
“Possibly,” Tom agreed.
“And for you, the explosion isn’t that big of a risk,” Kang continued. “Your Danger Sense will help, and your dodge ability has a defying physics tag as part of its description. I think it’ll be able to mitigate the explosion.”
“You’ve seen what it’s like. It’s inconsistent at best.”
“I saw it let you transition through a light statue and somehow kill it as if you’d shattered its core. If you can do that, you should be able to weather what’s just a physical blast.”
“Yeah, that was weird,” Tom admitted. “But it’s not something I can rely on. It’s only been activating once every three fights.”
“You’ve got a manual activation saved up. Use that.”
“And you think I can do what? Fatefully reposition myself to avoid an otherwise deadly shockwave?”
“You went through a light statue, so yes. That’s what I believe.”
“This is crazy.” Tom said.
“If you didn’t have Danger Sense with a ninety-five affinity, we wouldn’t have been trying this. But that lets you take risks that I wouldn’t have allowed others to consider.”
“It protecting me is a big assumption.”
“It really isn’t,” Kang counted. “We know this is a floor we can beat, and this is the best strategy for the boss. Which, in turn, means that it will work.”
Tom stared at the other reincarnator and tried to determine if that logic made any sense. After a moment, he gave up and considered a different question. Did he have a better plan to propose?
“Fine. We’ll do it your way.” He said grudgingly.