[CYA] Chapter 176: Choices (Patreon)

NOTE:Patreon does not like formatting/different 'alignments' of paragraphs that help make this fiction what it is.

Because of that, I will always be providing a link the google doc for each chapter where you can see it properly formatted. Elsewise, feel free to read the chapter here, if that is your preference.

I am sorry for the limitations of this platform.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O_-3j6sDffVujSduuAPl6WljoRFlAQgOk4kWhLrwstM/edit?usp=sharing

Previous__________ToC__________Next

<Alex, Real - Dorgon Calls for Aid, Innominate Dining Hall>

Alex swallowed his latest bite then gave his two cents on where they should be jumping next. “I’m realizing that aspect is going to be something I’m very interested in. There are seven star systems within jump-range with various intriguing aspects that we could harvest.”

Juba spoke up from the back of the room where he’d been sitting in on the meeting, chuckling at the Initiates’ antics all the while. “Alex, my friend. Do not forget that the siege platforms around Dorgon will have markets aplenty. You will be able to find almost any aspect from the entire Imperium in quantities for personal use and experimentation there, if you have the contribution to spend.”

Alex grunted. “Contribution, not merit."

“Of course not! The Imperium would not be so crass as to take merit from their soldiers, which could otherwise be used for their betterment. That is a thing of citizens, of times of peace. In war, every merit is needed for your own use with the System.”

Alex grunted again. It wasn’t news. He supposed he even appreciated it, as such would let him keep his merit in reserve until the tutorial ended, and he could add his multiplier in. “Right, right.” He frowned then. “I apologize for the tangent, but I do have a quick question. I can’t say I looked before, so I apologize if it’s a foolish question, but Juba? Does the System Store sell aspect?”

The other man chuckled. “It is both a foolish question and a reasonable one. You can buy anything available to you outside the System Store from it at increased prices—but the currency there is always merit. If a trade route exists for a given aspect, you can buy it and receive it instantly, paying the premium for expediency. If no means of acquisition exists, however?” He shook his head. “Then it will not be available in the local Store.”

Alex gave a slow nod. So, the end-of-tutorial Store should have anything they could have gotten within the tutorial—along with other things besides—but at a markup. “Thank you.”

So, he would get what he could afford outside it, and get more when he had access to the Store again.

Kaylee cleared her throat. “You’ve drawn us all into your tangent, Alex.”

He shook his head, smiling. “I disagree. I answered your question, and I still prefer to go get aspect. It’s relatively safe, profitable, and I can claim some of it for my own use, effectively at ‘wholesale’ rates.”

She gave him a long-suffering smile. “Fine, I suppose you’re correct. That isn’t really tangential to the topic at hand.”

Natasha shook her head. “I think that harvesting aspect isn’t the best use of our time. Even factoring in the benefit that Alex will get by getting any given aspect for cheaper, many of these missions can give a better return on time if we fulfill them correctly.”

Lenka spoke up then, her voice on the quieter side. “There’s also the spin-up time. We can’t harvest while the drive is charging or when it is charged. The aspected mana of the drive taints the result, and the harvester would get nothing.”

Alex sighed, conceding the point. Even if they were willing to maximize harvesting, only the truly unusual aspects would be worth the time, and none in jump range were noted as that valuable. “Understood. What do y’all want to do, then?”

Grant grinned. “I like the pirate fight. The one we’ve done got really nice loot as a start, and the Imperium seems to heavily reward the missions if we achieve a full wipe like we did on that one.”

Kaylee nodded. “That is a good use of time, similarly with answering distress calls. We’re close to the half-way point before we need to be at Dorgon. I’d vote for alternating between pirate missions and distress calls, assuming they are available and assuming nothing obviously more contributory presents itself.”

Grant cocked his head to the side, frowning. “Hey, does it strike anyone else as odd that there are so many pirates and distress calls? I mean… is this some backwater that isn’t ever patrolled? And, how are these distress calls all so recent when we learn about them?”

Everyone turned to look at Grant with incredulity, and the man cleared his throat, shrinking in his seat fractionally. Kaylee gave him a consoling smile. “In other circumstances I’d agree with you, but remember. We’re in… curated space—even if that seems crazy to say—and so we should expect oddities like this.”

Grant nodded quickly. “Right, right. I suppose I’m just getting a bit settled in my thinking. I wasn’t considering the broader situation.”

Juba chuckled. “Do not worry, my friend. It is easy to forget that the conflict on Dorgon will have pulled the vessels normally patrolling this area away from their usual areas of oversight. Things will continue to devolve in this sector until Dorgon is liberated or the rest of the Imperium is able to redistribute the fleet. I suspect that many crews will make their fortune in the next years.”

With that out of the way, they came back to Kaylee’s suggestion, quickly coming to a consensus.

The next jump would take them into a suspected pirate staging area.

Alex nodded along with the others. “Back, once more, into the fray.”

He reflected that he should do his skill selection and point allocation beforehand, however.

Yeah. I’ll do that next.

<Alex, Real - Dorgon Calls for Aid, Innominate Quarters>

Alex sank into the chair provided by his morphic wall with a contented sigh.

If life weren’t so full and interesting, he’d be tempted to spend his days right here, sitting in bliss.

But… he had a class skill to select and stats to allocate.

He’d already noticed an increase to his spherical sense, and that was amazing, but he wasn’t sure where he wanted to spend the rest of his points.

As such, his choice was easy. Skill selection first.

Class Notice:Class Skill or Spell ChoiceA Choice Must be Made forStubborn Student of the Master - Life Runewright (Legendary)

Options:Radix Translation (Simple) [Skill]Life’s Empowerment (Simple) [Skill]Basic Runewrighting (Simple) [Skill]

The slightly different format struck him as odd, but it wasn’t overly changed, so he quickly moved on.

It was still interesting to him that this gave no spells as options, but it did make a certain amount of sense. This wasn’t a caster class. It was a crafter one.

There were the two skills that he’d expected, and while his eyes kept skipping to the last one, he decided to ensure he properly remembered the first two before digging into the last.

Radix Translation would let him shift his workings of power so that they were no longer able to be ‘read’ by those who could interpret spell symbols and runes. It could even grow to allow him to disguise all that he did, magically, as something else if he wished, or even make it seem non-magical until activated. Or potentially even after activated.

He again imagined creating magical effects on items where the items never seemed to be magical at all. There was a lot of power in that.

Once again, that was incredibly tempting. He still really liked the potential within. He groaned. “Oh… I really want this one…”

Just like before, however, he had others to consider.

The next one, Life’s Empowerment, would let him enhance any magical item for a short time with an infusion of Life, rendering items into powerful, one-use versions of themselves.

It was still mostly a way of making ludicrously powerful ordnance, at least from a mundane perspective. Now that he’d learned about things like the devouring flame aspect… maybe this wouldn’t be that powerful in comparison…

In truth, this one was only really tempting because he might be able to grow it to allow him to affect enemy equipment or magics.

He tilted his head to the side and smiled. “Actually, I’m already doing that with my dissonant tonality… right?”

He hadn’t been able to just shout at the dreadweavers to dissipate them, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t reach that level eventually.

That left his last option.

Basic Runewrighting. It was simple in rarity, meaning he could guide its growth more fully, but there was a problem.

At level 5, his two originally offered skills would ‘downgrade’, and in this case, that meant going away as there was no rarity below simple.

So, effectively, it was now or never for the first two options.

He didn’t really mind that with Life’s Empowerment as it actually seemed like something he could figure out relatively quickly if he was ever so inclined, at least at the basic level. But for Radix Translation?

He had no idea how to even start that one… He could definitely investigate similar concepts and probably find something useful and get to a basic level of competence in time, but it would likely never be as powerful as if he had this skill, unless he found another source for the skill.

In that case, he could tell that it would be expensive to buy such a skill outright.

Basic Runewrighting on the other hand should be cheaper, even if it went away as well—which it shouldn’t—and there had to be multiple variations that he could eventually choose from.

That said, he had not found anything like that in the store, directly.

True, he already had a very similar skill, Life-Fueled Runewrighting, but that seemed to be filled with the knowledge—and oriented toward the accomplishment—of how to make the language of power that he put into an object permanent.

That seemed like it was what he wanted, but he still didn’t have the ability to make that language attach to the object, which was the step before it could be made permanent.

He could carve with his Basic Small Force Blade, and then fill it in, but he lacked the knowledge of how to lock that properly to an item for use.

To put it in software terms, he had an intrinsic understanding of logical design and a very robust debugger and compiler. He could even look at sections of code and instantly know exactly what they’d do, but he lacked what should have been the basic knowledge to actually make that code executable by a user.

He didn’t even know how to create a user interface at all, let alone how to go from there.

I’m a ridiculously pigeonholed, back-end developer without any functional support.

It was rather infuriating.

He suspected that a large part of this was because his Life-Fueled Runewrighting was focused on using Life in runewrighting rather than on the runewrighting itself. It didn’t help that the skill had been an improvement of his Crude Magical Symbol Facilitation, which was not an item making skill either.

Regardless, it left him with a rather ridiculous hole in his capabilities.

He now suspected that he’d be able to modify items with reasonable ease—though it wouldn’t be as easy as working with things of overt magic more than matter like the dreadweavers had been—but creating anything new would be beyond him until he found a way of filling this knowledge gap.

But he was allowing himself to spiral.

Basic Runewrighting would unquestionably be an amazing choice and open the doors to so, so much, but he was level four in this class.

He was about to get another class skill. So, the real question wasn’t whether he liked Radix Translation or Basic Runewrighting better, but whether he thought that Radix Translation was better or worse than the options he’d get offered  to replace it and Life’s Empowerment… assuming he’d be offered two skills instead of just one new one.

He really wanted to be able to make magical items, but in truth? His time was so ridiculously full at the moment, could he really devote the time required to make that a reality?

Having another level of buffer before he had to add that to his training might actually allow him to have a breath.

His shoes should be within his reach to modify, and if he couldn’t create new items, he wouldn’t feel obligated to kit out his companions just yet.

Did he really want to take on more responsibility right now?

He groaned in frustration as the counter came all-to-easily. If he didn’t make items for his companions and someone died because of it, would he be alright with that?

The answer was obviously no, he wouldn’t be alright with their death, but that didn’t make it his fault.

Radix Translation would potentially be insanely useful in the future, but it would honestly be rather useless in the moment…

He hesitated.

Did he have to choose?

Could he leave this aside and wait for his next level-up?

He quickly pulled out his System Basic’s book and flipped a few sections, piecing it together.

The notification wouldn’t go away until he chose.

If he leveled up again, it seemed that he wouldn’t be shown a list of potential skills and spells for the new milestone until he picked the previous. Moreover, his class wouldn’t be able to evolve.

That wasn’t so bad…

The one bad thing was that without the new skill being used before the class evolution, it couldn’t help influence that evolution…

“Gah!” Alex threw his hands up in frustration, instantly feeling silly for the action.

He grimaced and pulled up his Create Rations, filling it with mana while letting it do as it wished.

A moment later, he was prompted to bring out a large cup.

He got his largest from Inventory, and it thankfully qualified despite it actually being a wide-mouthed water bottle.

A moment later, the bottle was filled with ginger beer, the pleasant sizzle-pop of the carbonated drink taking the edge off his nerves.

The coolness of the beverage came through the plastic bottle, the sensation further easing his tension.

He hadn’t really been hungry, so this was exactly what he’d needed in the moment.

As such, he decided to simply sit and enjoy, at least until the ginger beer was done.

Previous__________ToC__________Next