System Change

“Luckily, once you passed whatever test the Origin System gave you—which I assume had to do with that Starfury beast—the system only lingered for a short time longer before disappearing when you left the dungeon. Thus, giving us the opportunity to have a chat,” Dave explained.

“So how is knowing this supposed to help me?” Derek questioned.

“Ah, you see. Knowledge is power. As I said before, in the long run, everything will be for the best—at least for you. In the meantime, knowing what has happened to you may allow you to prepare for what may come.”

Still, Derek had some things about experience that he wanted to know. The talk of essence had bugged him a bit. “Okay, I understand that, but I have some questions. Will you answer them?”

“Maybe,” the man replied. “Questions about what has already happened to you I will answer, but other questions… we’ll see.”

“I want to know about experience. You said that experience is essence that’s quantified into numbers, which makes it easy to understand? Then why do some classes give fewer stat points per level than the other if our bodies are able to hold the same amount?” Derek asked.

“Quality,” Dave answered. “A beast at your own level that you slay tends to give around ten percent of their total unabsorbed essence, that is, for a regular system user with a common class. For rarer classes, which, if you haven’t guessed yet, are earned from higher affinity, systems help compress the essence into a more compatible form for your higher affinity. Thus, causing higher rarity classes to need more essence to level up.”

“I… see…”

“The same is true for skills, except they absorb the natural essence around you. Naturally, this causes some problems.”

“The two skills you received from the Origin System. I am unable to see them, but I imagine they don’t have a level?” the man asked.

“Yes, they say N/A,” Derek answered.

“That is because the natural essence in this system isn’t of high enough quality to support and enhance them. The one that allows you to move freely anywhere—which apparently included in my dungeons—would not work as well in a system with more dense, high-quality essence. But, it would be able to level and reach that stage… and more. It’s a very interesting skill.” Dave nodded.

“Void Travel,” Derek said. “And I was wondering about that. The description says that it may cause harm to things in separate spaces—list storage rings and possible my Time Prison. And Silvi experienced that first hand with her ingredients.”

“Awful, terrible skill,” Silvi chimed in.

“How would that affect a person?” Derek asked.

“I don’t know,” Dave replied. “I know little about the void or its inner workings. That will be something for you to find out. Perhaps when you level the skill, it will allow you to bring others along without harm.”

“What about Void Storage?” Derek asked, remembering that it said N/A, too.

“Ah, that was a basic void skill that I had access to. It grows with your affinity and intelligence. The higher quality essence used to level, the better for skills like those.”

“Which brings me to my other question—skills,” Derek said. “Why are my skills so… utility?”

“I want to say that utility is the nature of the void, but I can’t. Void affinity skills are controlled and not easy to come by. As are time affinity skills, and a few others. The skills you have been awarded are the skills we have. And we pushed it a little with Void Call and Time Prison,” he explained.

“What do you mean?” Derek asked.

“Well… Void Call is a skill that can bring disaster when used until you’ve reached a high enough level in it, yet has to be used constantly to level it. Even in this system, you will find that there are a few Void Beasts that are close to their own evolution. They may be a small amount weaker than you are now, but if one of them would have ‘gotten the call,’ so to speak, when you were ‘farming’ them, you and many cities would have been in real trouble.

“As for Time Prison, it leans much closer to a time-based skill with limited space capability. And they aren’t combined enough to be considered ‘void.’ It was a stretch giving it to you, but we were low on allowed void skills,” Dave finished.

Derek nodded along with everything, and his mind landed on Void Beasts. “That’s something else I wanted to know. Void Beasts. Why are they able to give direct stats?”

“When prepared correctly, you are directly absorbing already processed essence from the beasts. Void Beasts have no system that I am aware of, so the essence they absorb is immediately processed into one of their stats, as far as I know. As for the freshly created Void Beasts, the theory is that an abundance of vital essence is used to create a Void Beast from nothing, and thus, its blood holds that until it is absorbed into the rest of its body. Of course, your body will only be allowed to absorb so much because of its limits. You can forcefully push your body past the stat caps, but there will be massive diminishing returns once you do.”

“So if I were to consume more Void Beasts?”

“Ones from here? Without your limits, you could easily increase your strength and dexterity, but your other stats are beyond what a Void Beast’s body would be able to process. So, you would still get stats for a while, but I couldn’t tell you how many.”

It still freaked Derek out that the elven man was able to so easily look and talk about his personal stats. But Derek had gotten answers—real answers—to many of the questions that had been plaguing him, so he couldn’t complain.

“The fascinating thing is that while you were trapped in the void, your body must have begun to absorb essence like a Void Beast. Otherwise, your Meditation skill without any multipliers wouldn’t have had such growth. It’s a shame that your body didn’t absorb and process it like your skill did. That would have been fascinating.” Dave smiled. “But that is that. Do you have any other questions?”

Derek thought about it. “Will you tell me about other systems? Are there more than the Great, Universal, and Origin Systems?”

“No. You’ve learned more than anyone in your current system just by knowing those three names,” Dave replied.

“Hmm…” Ah, that… Derek thought. “If I were to go back to the… what was it? Universal System?” When Derek spoke, Dave nodded his head. “Would I… transition between systems once again?”

“No, you would not.” Dave answered easily. “A Universal System focuses on quantity, spreading out through the universe and bringing as many people and planets into its folds as possible. Because of that, it cannot focus on individuals, which makes higher affinity users less common, and gives it a limited range when a user is outside of its domain. The… ‘Great’ System, on the other hand, is more of a quality system. It focuses more on the individuals. This leads to fewer users, but users of higher affinities. Other than that, I will say no more.”

Derek nodded. It was more system information than he thought he’d get out of him. “What about the notification I almost received when I upgraded my wisdom stat to 1500?”

“Not telling. You can figure that one out.”

“Okay…” Derek snorted. “I can’t think of anything else, then.” Dammit, I wish I had an entire day to think about questions. Why doesn’t this guy work on a schedule?

“Great!” Dave took a sip of his coffee. “Now, for the real reason that I called you here. Let’s talk about rewards.”

“Rewards?” Derek’s eyes lit up. He really liked loot, and he had been getting screwed out of it for far too long. Sure, he liked the boots and spatial skill, but while any starving man would like a package of crackers, they would choose a full course meal over it any day.

“Let’s see…” Dave began. “You missed a total of 210 stat points, 12 upgrade points, and a system specific achievement from the dual, battle, and final boss. You got a pair of shiny boots with a skill that shouldn’t be in this system attached, and a peak system spatial skill.”

Derek sat in silence as Dave did his calculations. He didn’t know what the man was calculating, but he wasn’t about to interrupt. It was nice to know that the boots may have been better than he thought, though.

“Okay, so here’s the deal. As you know, I can’t do anything about the stat points, upgrade points, or the achievement. However, with your current mythic class, you will have more than enough stats when you level to break the thresholds for strength and dexterity,” the man said, and Derek took it as more of a hint of what he needed to do. “Also, with the mythic class, the quality of essence absorbed is increased even further, which will allow your skills to level up more easily.”

The man then touched a ring on his finger and began fidgeting with it. “There are many skills that I could have imprinted on you as rewards, but that is no longer possible, so we will have to make do with skill scrolls. Those choices are more limited.”

Derek nodded. I wonder how limited they are.

“Your build has been a very defensive build that is neigh unkillable and uncapturable in this system. There is nothing wrong with that, but as you tend to prefer solo fights or ones with just a companion or two, you need some offensive skills.”

“Exactly,” Derek said. He’d been thinking the same thing.

“First, I’ll give you this to help round out your current build, then we can discuss other skills.” In the man’s hand, a skill scroll appeared. This had all the signs of it coming from his storage ring instead of fading into existence out of nowhere. He tossed the scroll to Derek and he caught it.

Derek gave it a cursory look and nodded. It was a Skill Scroll of Mental Resistance. So by round out my current build, he meant in resistances. With this, I’ll have all three. Though, this is something I could have gotten eventually by trading with the royal family.

“Learn it,” the man said. “You’re not passing things I give you personally off to others.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Derek quickly accept the confirmation and learned the skill.

“Resistance skills are lower tier skills, but are rare everywhere, as they work on all levels… especially if you have all three.”

Derek nodded. “I see…”

“Now… for the offensive skills. As I said before, time affinity and void affinity skills—especially so in the form of scrolls—are very controlled and limited. That leaves us with the space affinity if you want skills that are compatible with your void affinity. I do have a nice peak space affinity skill scroll for this system, and it is very compatible with your glaive.” Another scroll appeared in the man’s hand and he tossed it to Derek. “What do you think?”

Derek raised his eyebrows at the name of the skill. Spatial Rend. “Seems violent,” he said.

“Very much so,” the man agreed. “But isn’t that what offensive skills are for?”

“What does it do?”

“It’s an unpredictable attack that appears where you direct it. It is very hard to stop by normal defenses, and cuts created contain the attacks properties, which makes the healing process much more complicated,” Dave explained.

“I’ll take it,” Derek said with a smile. That was something he was going to need if he had to fight more enemies with high vitality and endurance—or upgrade meditation skills. An ability that hinders regeneration and healing would be perfect for him. He definitely watched the Starfury fight.

“Let’s see… I have some spatial teleportation and storage skills—including the spatial skill used to make storage rings—but you already have skills like those. And no, you are not getting that skill to give it to that little crafter girl. Barrier… constriction… movement… no… infusion?… no, not as good as Channel Void… ah… how about Spatial Collapse?”

“What does it do?” Derek asked.

“It’s the ability to collapse space around a target. The skill starts small, but gets better. It is a skill in combination with the gravity affinity, but it is still mostly space. For some targets, the skill would mean instant death, others may have the strength to withstand it, and it will just hinder their movements with the pressure from the collapse.”

Derek thought about it for a bit. “They are both ranged skills, aren’t they?”

“Yes, that is what you need.”

“I’ll take it, too.” Derek agreed, and the man tossed him the other scroll.

“Now, what to give your other half?”

Silvi looked up from her meal and licked her lips. “Recipes! Ingredients! Opposable thumbs!”

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