Chapter 45: Reviewing Gains (Patreon)

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The walk back to Avernon was awkward, to say the least. The first hour was spent in complete silence, the tension so thick it could be cut with a knife. Cayden tried multiple times to think of ways to try and break the ice, but nothing came to mind.

Neither Elise nor the princess, at least, appeared to be bothered by the atmosphere. The princess might have only had an amazing poker face – she walked with a stoic expression as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Which was impressive for someone who had so recently been the target of an assassination attempt.

Cayden assumed she had some ulterior motive for asking to travel with them. After all, it wasn’t as if they needed to travel together to make it to Avernon; Elise could have simply shown them her map and given them the correct heading and they would have been fine on their own. And in comparison to the two bodyguards, Cayden didn’t think he and Elise added much in terms of combat power. But for some reason, the princess had thought it necessary to travel as a group, though Cayden couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. It certainly didn’t seem to be out of a desire to make conversation.

Elise, for her part, was engrossed with her notebook, completely oblivious to the glances from Marianne and the glares from the bodyguards. Cayden didn’t know what she was working on, but her behavior was typical of their time spent traveling to and from dungeons. She had never confirmed it, but Cayden assumed she had gotten a skill that allowed her to walk without constantly tripping or crashing into things, since he almost never had to guide her anymore when she was distracted.

After running through a few potential avenues of bringing up Tiana with the princess again, only to cringe at the awkwardness of the attempts even in his own head, Cayden decided to shelve the idea for later. It was almost a four-hour walk back to Avernon – hopefully a better opportunity would present itself later.

With the two bodyguards constantly scanning the surroundings for dangers (when they weren’t shooting glares at Cayden and Elise), there was little for Cayden to do as they walked. So, with a thought, he pulled up his status and the waiting notifications.

Name: Cayden Johannson

Age: 15

Race: Gargoyle

Racial Level: 13

Class: Athlete

Class Level: 8

Stats:

  Vitality: 41

  Charisma: 8

  Strength: 33

  Endurance: 32 

  Agility: 25

  Dexterity: 22

  Perception: 13

  Mind: 20

  Magic Power: 9

  Magic Control: 8

  Mana: 90

  Mana Regeneration: 7 mana per min

  Free Stats: 14

Racial Skills:

  Boost Passive

  Clawed Grasp

  Skin of Stone

General Skills (max 6):

  Claw Mastery (lvl 3)

  Hold the Line (lvl 3)

  Resilience (lvl 9)

  Resistance (lvl 11)

  Taunt (lvl 8)

  Unflinching (lvl 4)

Class Skills:

  Enhanced Flexibility (lvl 8)

  Physical Training (lvl 9)

  Recovery (lvl 9)

  The Moment (lvl 8)

He was significantly more powerful than he had been ten months earlier. After the first few weeks of delving and selling all his loot to ensure he had enough to live off of, Cayden spent almost all of his collected experience crystals on leveling. During those first months of delving two times a week, he shot up in levels like a rocket, but his speed quickly slowed after he passed level ten.

There were unfortunately no numbers for experience points, so it was impossible to tell with precision how close he was to the next level, but he could feel generally how much experience he had accumulated and how much was required for the next level. And after hitting level ten, the amount for each consecutive level was huge.

At level thirteen, it would take around a half-dozen dungeons’ worth of experience crystals to advance to the next level. And that was if it was a full clear of a dungeon, with monsters at a high level, and he wasn’t splitting the loot with anyone else. It was certainly doable, and Cayden was already over halfway to level fourteen, but gone were the days where he could level up multiple times from a single delve.

More impressive than his gains from leveling – at least to Cayden’s mind – were his gains from training. He couldn’t see what his ‘base’ stats were, nor could he see what his ‘base’ caps on his stats were, but at level nine, [Physical Training] provided a thirty-eight percent increase to the caps on his base stats. After factoring in the thirty percent boost from [Boost Passive], the caps for his stats were almost fifty percent higher than they otherwise would be.

And Cayden was determined to make full use of that advantage.

Any time he wasn’t delving, Cayden was training. Some of that was training with his weapons with Diedrich or another adventurer, but the vast majority of his time was spent training his physical stats. [Recovery] allowed him to push himself much further and longer than he otherwise would have, and his huge vitality, coupled with Elise’s health potions, kept him in tip-top shape after training and delves, ensuring he never lost time due to injuries.

His constant training resulted in explosive growth in his class skills. After two years of working for Dryson as an [Apprentice Blacksmith], he hadn’t even hit level six in his class. Yet after only ten months with the [Athlete] class, Cayden was fast approaching the first class evolution breakpoint at level ten. And if [The Moment] and [Enhanced Flexibility] weren’t so much slower to level than his other two class skills, Cayden was sure his class would be twice its current level.

Every time he leveled [Physical Training], it upped the upper limit on his cap of base stats by just the smallest amount, which kept Cayden motivated to push himself even harder to reach his new cap. But his increased effort just resulted in faster growth of his class, an endless cycle of growth that rocketed Cayden forward.

Aside from his gains from racial level-ups, Cayden had gained twenty-five points in his physical stats from training. Over three full levels worth of stats, purely from his hard work and [Physical Training]. Those points were mostly evenly split between vitality, strength, endurance, and agility, but he’d even gained a few points in dexterity as well.

But for all that he enjoyed seeing the results of all of his hard work, he hadn’t pulled up his menu to gloat over his stats. He looked to the bottom of his status page where his general skills were listed.

Unfortunately, skill growth also slowed down significantly after hitting level ten, and after ten months of delving [Resistance] was still only level eleven. Some of that could be attributed to the lack of challenge for the skill – few of the monsters in the dungeons Cayden regularly delved could seriously hurt him any longer – but more could be attributed to the slow-down after level ten. Even getting mauled by the terravia hadn’t been enough to gain him a [Resistance] level.

Luckily – or perhaps not luckily – most of his skills were still under level ten, and so still saw a good amount of growth on each delve. [Claw Mastery], [Hold the Line], [Resilience], and [Unflinching] had each leveled once between his delve of the branting dungeon and his ‘fight’ with the terravias – a respectable amount of growth that Cayden had come to expect when he put himself in serious danger.

[Resilience] was his only current tier-two skill, and was a combination of [Stone Skin], [What Doesn’t Kill You], and [Hardiness].

Resilience (passive) (lvl 9): Gain a 38% boost to the effectiveness of the user's vitality. Heal from injuries at an increased rate, and gain the ability to heal from lasting injuries.

It had come as a surprise when he’d been offered the skill, and his first instinct had been to reject it immediately. He was fully planning on acquiring [Peak Phisique], the tier-two skill above [Hardiness] and [Endurance] which would apply its boost to the four physical stats of vitality, strength, endurance, and agility. He didn’t want to lose [Hardiness] to a skill that seemed much less impressive. The increased healing that [Resilience] offered was certainly nice, but that was something he could get from health potions. And he didn’t see how a boost to the ‘effectiveness’ of vitality was any better than a boost directly to his vitality stat.

Luckily, though, he consulted with Elise before rejecting it.

Increased effectiveness of a stat had several benefits over a boost to the stat itself. Firstly, stats suffered a bit from diminishing returns as they grew to higher and higher numbers. This was offset somewhat by synergies with someone’s build and different skills, but an increase to the effectiveness of a stat bypassed the diminishing returns entirely that a normal boost would suffer from.

Secondly, an ‘effectiveness’ boost applied to the entirety of the stat rather than just to the current stat’s number, which meant it stacked with other vitality-boosting skills. For example, with a vitality of forty-one, [Hardiness] (at level one with a thirty percent boost) would increase his effective vitality by twelve to fifty-three. Adding in a weapon mastery skill that boosted vitality by thirty percent would add another twelve vitality, making his total effective vitality sixty-five. But if, instead of the weapon master skill, he had [Resilience] boosting the effectiveness of vitality by thirty percent, the thirty percent would apply to his already boosted vitality of fifty-three, resulting in a total effective vitality of sixty-nine.

Now, that was only a four point increase over a skill that applied its boost directly to his vitality stat, but that benefit would only grow as his stats and skills increased further. But even so, Cayden didn’t feel the skill was worth it if it meant he’d have to sacrifice [Peak Physique].

Which was when Elise made her second point, revealing a misconception in Cayden’s understanding of skills.

Each person could only have one copy of each skill, and that included constituent skills for higher tiers. So if Cayden possessed [Resilience], which had [Hardiness] as a constituent skill, he couldn’t re-learn [Hardiness] or any other skill that had [Hardiness] as a sub-skill.

But Elise corrected his thinking. While it was true that he could only ever possess one instance of each skill, there was no limit on having duplicate effects of a skill.

[Peak Physique] was a tier-two skill that combined the effects of the boosting skills for the four physical stats. But, like [Physical Resistance] and all other tier-two skills, it could be formed by various combinations of three sub-skills without losing its effects.

Meaning Cayden could still gain the thirty percent boost to vitality from [Peak Physique] via the combination of the strength, endurance, and agility boosting skills into [Peak Physique], while simultaneously gaining a thirty percent boost to the effectiveness of vitality via [Resilience].

It was a mind-blowing realization that added a whole new level of nuance and possibilities to his potential skill combinations. Unfortunately, due to the limited information available on tier-three skills, Elise was unsure if tier-two skills with doubled-up effects (like [Reslience] and [Peak Physique]) could be combined even further, creating some sort of mega-hardiness skill. But Cayden really wanted to try.

But while his existing skills and their theoretical combinations were always interesting to Cayden, they also weren’t his current focus. He turned his attention to his notifications of newly offered skills.

Reckless Charge (active): Increase the user's weight and gain a large boost of speed in a specific direction. Small mana cost.

Mind is a Temple (passive): Alerts the user when affected by a mind-altering skill or effect.

Cayden frowned as he read through the first skill. As useful as it had been to get the attention of the terravias, he had no intention of making [Reckless Charge] a staple maneuver of his build. He was sure the skill was valuable to the right person, but it didn’t fit his current fighting style of forcing his enemies to come to him with [Taunt].

[Mind is a Temple], though, was exactly what he had been hoping for after his experience with [Compulsion]. He wasn’t sure how useful it would be in the long run, and even in the short run knowing about a skill was vastly different from being able to do something about it. But it was a step in the right direction, and as long as the princess with the dangerous [Compulsion] skill was nearby, he would enjoy the peace of mind that [Mind is a Temple] could give him.

But before he accepted the skill, he needed to perform his due diligence with [Reckless Charge]. With all the potential tier-two skill variations, it had become habit for Cayden to learn every skill he was offered to check for potential combinations, even if it was only for a few seconds before being abandoned. So, after losing his [Claw Mastery] skill for perhaps the hundredth time over the last ten months, Cayden accepted [Reckless Charge].

And was surprised by the follow-up notification.

Skills available for merging: would you like to merge Hold the Line, Reckless Charge, and Unflinching into the skill Inertia? All skill levels will be lost, and the new skill will start at level 1.

Inertia (active): Increase or decrease the user's inertia. Variable mana cost.

Cayden smiled. And that was exactly why he had gotten into the habit of testing skills even when he had no intention of keeping them. He quickly analyzed the newly offered skill.

It would lose the resistance to stunning effects that [Unflinching] offered, but otherwise it seemed like a simple variation to [Hold the Line] that allowed it to be used both offensively and defensively. But, unlike [Hold the Line], [Inertia] said nothing about its effects being ‘temporary’.

The biggest downside to [Hold the Line] was that, with Cayden’s current mana pool, it could only be used once in battle, or perhaps twice if he used no other active skills. And after being used, it only lasted for around thirty seconds or until he moved from his position.

But from the description of [Inertia], it sounded like any changes he made would be permanent until he reactivated the skill. Which meant that, with a little prep work, he could enter a fight with a full mana pool and the effects of [Hold the Line] permanently active. And it would be even better if he could change his inertia throughout a battle to surprise his opponents, though the viability of that would depend on how much mana it cost.

With a grin, Cayden accepted his new skill.

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I recently realized that I previously made a mistake when displaying the % effects of skills that weren't level one. At level 5, a skill that started with a 30% boost would have a 34% boost, not 35%. Not much of a difference, just letting you know.