7/24

1st Studio lot, Broken Crow airship.

12:10 AM

Back on the airship. I lie in my bunk, close my eyes and dive deep into menus.

First thing I do is check my stats and free points.

Physical Attributes

Strength 250

Dexterity 376

Agility 342

Toughness 100

Constitution 100

Mental Attributes

Intelligence 346

Memory 148

Wisdom 132

Charisma 178

Reflexes 292

Etheric Attributes

Arcana 369

Faith 0

Spirit 64

Ki 485

Luck 168

Free points 579

Okay, okay, so maybe I've been hoarding free points. I was honestly waiting for other people to hit 500 in stats, to see what was worth pumping up that high. But I guess that's not in the cards right now.

Good news is that there's no longer a "+X from M3 Mongoose" next to any of my stats. That means I have fully absorbed the bonuses from my old knife, and can hand it off to someone else. Though after thinking about the messed up stuff the M3 got me through, I'll probably keep it.

Toughness first. I drop 150 points in, raising it to 250.

Notice! You have reached 250 Toughness, and are offered the following choice:

Physical Reduction - Choose a physical damage type (slash, piece or impact). Damage you take from that type is reduced by 50%

Elemental Reduction - Choose two elemental damage types. Damage you take from those types is reduced by 50%

Armor Reinforcement - Armor and clothes you wear gain the benefit of 1/2 of your Toughness.

Are you kidding me? Armor Reinforcement! That's going to stack with the utter nonsense I'm about to do with an enchantment, too.

I put 158 points into Agility to see what happens.

Notice! You have reached 500 Agility! You are offered the following choice:

Evolution: Catfolk - You will become a Catfolk. Future Agility investments are multiplied by 3. Future Charisma investments are multiplied by 2. Future Toughness investments are reduced by half. You gain the Free Fall ability.

City Teleport - Teleport to any city you have previously been to, once per hour. The location within the city will be random. You may take Agility/100 other creatures with you.

Well shit. If this evolution option is similar to what that crazy giant guy got at 500 Strength, I can see why he's such a menace. For me, I could get 3 Agility for every free point I put in. That's wild. And yeah, that's what "investment" means. Only your free points, not points automatically allocated by your class. I look into the Free Fall ability and it lets you never take falling damage. Like a cat. Neat.

HOWEVER, teleporting, even to a random location in a city, is just far too useful to pass up. Especially for my life right now. I can bring 5 other people with me? That's incredible. Combine that with my planned trip around the Scourge world, and I should be able to go... Well, lots of places. I'm not even worried about the random location thing. I still have 500 Agility, so I can get pretty much anywhere inside a city in seconds.

Literally seconds. With my Agility and Sprint perk, my top running speed is- This can't be right. 412.5 miles per hour?!? What the fuck! I think about my recent fights and how my speed has worked. I come up with something fairly obvious: It takes time to get to full speed. In most fights I'm not running full tilt for any real distance. I'd need some room to get up and running, so to speak. I'll put 412 MPH down as a "potential" speed. I probably won't actually want to go that fast, ever. At that speed, with that much momentum and force behind me, even touching a normal person might make them explode. Or me. I could explode. I'm gonna have to do some science on this. Where's a Mythbuster when you need one?

The last thing I do for now is drop 15 points into Ki Points, bringing it to 500. I just want to find out what happens there.

Notice! You have reached 500 Ki! You are offered the following choice:

Evolution: Seijin - You will become a Seijin. Future Ki investments are multiplied by 3. Future Strength investments are multiplied by 2. Future Intelligence investments are reduced by half. You gain the Super Seijin ability.

Core Creation - You spin Ki threads into a Xianxia-style Ki core.

Ki Breathing - Grant your Ki an alignment.

Ah, Seijin is Saiyin. As in Goku and crew. As funny as that sounds, the nerf to my Intelligence is absolutely unacceptable.

I have to look up what a Xianxia core is. It's completely obtuse. It "makes you more powerful" but nobody has any idea why or how or by how much. It refines your Ki. So you punch harder because you have a core? Also there's something about Ki threads. Look, I'm going to be honest and say that it sounds like someone wrote way too much explanation for "guy trained and got stronger."

I look at the Dracosys details on the core and find that this thing basically allows you to reallocate Ki into your physical stats. You can reduce your max KP by 100 to improve your Strength by 100. Neat.

Ki Breathing is interesting. You can alter the type of Ki you produce to take on an element or alignment that you can otherwise produce. So you might use, oh, for example, water magic to give you water breathing, which in turn makes your Ki techniques water flavored.

Ignoring the obvious anime references, I might be able to do something with Ki Breathing. I just kind of have a feeling like it's the right one. My 6th step class gave me my four Astral elements. The Stylist class's effects keep quietly altering my abilities to match them. My Chimerablood armor keys into those elements. Ki Breathing feels like another step down a path. I'm not sure where the path leads, but I'm sure it's going to be powerful.

-----

Next up is my equipment. When I got levels in Enchanter I got some enchantments, obviously. But there's one in particular of import.

Weight Class Up

Master

The attached clothing counts as armor.

Proficiency: 0%

This, on its own, is rather useless to me. If you had some special clothes, and had abilities that boosted armor, you'd be fine with it. I have the opposite problem. I have several abilities that boost clothing, but I generally wear armor.

If only there was a way... Enter my Enchanter subclass!

Mirror - You gain the opposite of one enchantment. You can change which enchantment this is by concentrating for 10 minutes.

So now I have an "armor counts as clothes" enchantment. I slap it on my Chimerablood Bracelet. The slap is literal. When you trigger an enchantment a complex arcane symbol appears on your palm and you press your palm against your target for 5 seconds to use it.

So now:

Unarmored Armor increases my Toughness by 35% while I'm in clothes.

Iron Cloak increases my Toughness by 1/2 of my Agility if I'm wearing a coat. The armor counts as an overcoat now.

Ki Body Armor increases my Toughness equal to my current KP, which at max is 500.

I dive into the minutiae of my abilities and items to find a couple of really dickish limiters. Apparently stats can't be boosted via passive abilities by more than 200%. So my 250 Toughness isn't currently 1300 Toughness, it's 750.

Now, that might sound like a lot, but humans weren't particularly tough to begin with. So being 75 times as Tough as the average person isn't actually, wait, fuck that's crazy.

I get out of bed and flash on my Solar Wolf armor. From my inventory I pull out the plasma rifle I got earlier. I know it's a bit more powerful than a regular rifle. I shoot my hand. It literally does fucking nothing.

My abilities don't push me over that 750 cap, but the armor perk from hitting 250 Toughness does stack. So my armor is looking good at 1125 Toughness. I'm like 6 times more durable than I was minutes ago.

Sigh. This is why Brian used to yell at me for multiclassing. This is so brokenly OP that I think my teammates are probably going to slap me.

-----

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Next up is the dreaded Upcycle perk I got from hitting level 200 in Synergist. It lets me ditch one ability, permanently, to boost another ability 25%, permanently.

Except you can keep boosting an ability up to 10 times. And each 25% boost is applied to the current ability. It's goddamn compounding interest on my ability effectiveness! So if I drop ten 25% boosts on a single ability, its effect is increased by 831.32%. Which is a fucking lot.

I check the fine print again, looking for a reason this won't work, and I find none. Actually, I find a beyond insane loophole.

Synergist Level 200 - Upcycle

You can sacrifice an ability to upgrade another by 25%.

Shockingly, the ability I upgrade doesn't have to be mine. If I know an ally's ability, I can designate that as the recipient, as long as I'm touching them.

My Intelligence and Wisdom do a recalculation on whether I should go ahead by myself or be part of a team, and my brain now massively favors being part of a team. Using Upcycle I can grab tons of crap abilities with my super fast leveling speed, and upgrade my allies, who all level way, way slower than I do.

I start looking for any abilities I can dump, and quickly group them.

Sneaky stuff like Silent Scope, One Quiet Knife and Trackless are all getting ditched. I am not sneaky. I am usually holding a giant sword or firing dozens of lasers.

Gun specific techniques like Full Auto and Steady Burst are getting ditched. Anything that applies to all weapons stays.

From the Operative class I got a lot of hacking and lockpicking stuff. Just gonna pretend those never existed. I do keep one that increases my download speeds. That'll be nice when I have to update games on Steam.

Kinesiologist gave me ten different buffs. None of them last more than a few seconds. Do I really need to improve my allies's crawl speed for 10 seconds with Crawl Faster? No. No I don't.

From Toxicologist and Experimentalist I got a handful of crappy poisons, though some good ones. The crappy ones take effect "over the course of 24 hours" which is great for an actual spy or assassin. The target is affected but doesn't know right away. For me, it means those poisons will have little to no effect during a fight. Ditch!

I did keep a poison that makes people feel like they have to pee. That seems hilarious.

I have some attack techniques I never use like Air Punch, Blind Strike and Rallying Disarm. They mostly fall under an umbrella labeled "telekinesis and/or magic do it better." So those are going away.

I have a few low level healing techniques like Regen and Healing Palm. There's nothing wrong with them, other than Restoration Palm doing the job more quickly. I don't need slow healing. I need fast, "save a life in combat" healing.

I get rid of most of my movement techniques. They're all intended to move me quickly. My Agility now dramatically outstrips those. So long, Spiral Dodge!

Apparently I had illusion spells. Had, as in past tense. If I have to choose between tricking a monster and just murdering it, I'll take the murder route. Just like the stealth stuff, it just doesn't feel like me.

I only drop one other spell, Mind Scraper. It deals damage to an opponent while reading their thoughts. The often bizarre sensory input I received from it was disorienting and made me barf once. Using it on a giant ant was a massive mistake.

I end up marking 84 abilities for deletion. I delete the first one and am prompted to specify the upgrading ability. My obvious first choice for an upgrade gives me an error message.

Star Swarm cannot be upgraded due to being incomplete.

Wait, does that mean I have to get all 1000 classes to finish it? That's going to be a pain in the ass.

I move to my second choice, Restoration Palm, and delete 9 more to bring it to that magical 10th upgrade. Restoration Palm is now going to be a clutch healing technique. On the down side it looks like the KP cost got increased too.

Restoration Palm

Expert

Hold your hand over a wound to gradually heal it. Can't regrow things lost but can stitch together things severed.

Range: 20 inches

Cost: 93 Ki Points per second

Proficiency: 1000%

Upcycle Boost: 831.32%

This thing is now extremely powerful healing, but also a KP hog. I won't be able to heal more than 5 times per fight.

I look at my 3rd choice, Telekinesis. Getting upgraded means I can control more things at once, with more power and speed. It doesn't cost me anything to use, due to my Psychic subclass, so I don't have to worry about a cost increase.

That leaves me with 64 earmarked for death abilities. I want to give 10 to Jose, because I know he's got a certain perception based technique that would be crazy with a big upgrade.

54 upgrades. I wake everyone up.

-----

7/24

1st Studio lot, Broken Crow airship.

12:15 AM

Everyone is in the kitchen, looking annoyed at me. Again. Nobody is saying anything. I get the "move it along" hand roll from Ivy.

"Yeah so I can permanently upgrade one of your abilities by over 800%. One each, that is. So pick something. But the cost of that ability will increase by the same amount. So pick a passive unless you're confident in covering a times eight or nine cost."

They exchange raised eyebrows and skeptical looks.

"It's a Synergist thing. I can dump irrelevant abilities, which I have by the dozens, to upgrade other abilities. The system doesn't limit the upgrading to my abilities. Oh, I guess I have to touch you to do it." I look down at my gauntlets. "My healing stuff works through gloves so it should be fine."

With that I give them a wave and head back to bed.

"Just a minute, mate, run that past us again." Quins's dubious voice stops me.

"You heard me. I can upgrade one of your abilities. Well, technically I can upgrade six total abilities, though I'm saving one for Jose. So if you have two really clutch abilities, you can argue for that 5th upgrade."

"Describe the word upgrade, in detail," Odysseus says, rubbing his forehead with clear annoyance.

I explain. "Oh, it's in line with the proficiency bonus, but separate, and stacks with that. Some abilities have way better proficiency bonuses than others so factor that in."

"Dude, like forever?" Ivy asks, with both wonder and a bit of drunkenness.

"Yeah it's permanent."

Mercy looks to be calculating things. "How much is the upgrade?"

"Plus 831.32%. Bringing the total effectiveness of an ability to 931.32%"

My teammates look a bit out of sorts. "Sorry, I know it's late. Think about it, get back to me tomorrow."

I take my leave again.

-----

Odysseus returned to his bunk. That kind of upgrade is worth an enormous amount of points, abilities, anything. Most abilities gave 10% to 35% bonuses. Giving Odysseus a bonus like that could change his entire strategy. It could massively improve his ability to contribute to fights.

And, for once, Jun was thinking about the team.

Odysseus had a few invocations he used all the time, and a few passives that could be better.

SMITE! had become his main contribution to fights. It added holy damage to his attacks, giving him enough punch to actually matter offensively. A huge buff to damage could be... Huge.

Healing Words was his main heal. It healed at range, and pretty well. He could play a recording of it slowly to increase the amount of healing at a cost of not being able to use another invocation at the same time. Bumping that up would really help survivability in the later floors of a dungeon.

The passives he wished were better were Golden Hour and Long Term Care.

Golden Hour provided a 25% (38% after the proficiency bonus) boost to all his healing. If he added Jun's upgrade to that it would increase all his heals by 353%. Not as singular as upgrading Healing Words, but very good.

The other ability that could really use a boost was Long Term Care. It provided a constant slow heal to all allies within 50 feet of him. As-is it was just useful for after combat cuts and scrapes. If it were buffed, he could constantly provide healing to everyone during a fight.

Odysseus contemplated being a damage dealer, surge healer, all-around healer or support healer. He also cursed at Jun for keeping him up so late.

-----

Quins was beside himself in his own bed. He tossed and turned in the build-it-yourself Swedish sleeper.

He considered the 'umble explosive arrow. Wasn't that where it began and ended? Ah, but if it made too big of a boom it couldn't be used in tight quarters. He'd need another, less powerful explosive arrow! The madness!

Oh, he could just go with Bowman. That passively gave him a flat bonus to his bow accuracy, speed and power. Consistently useful, that one was.

Oh, oh! But what about the Acid Arrow? That was super against bosses, just dripped right through armor. Made short work of those jet robots, and they were tough customers.

Ahh, should he go big, go lethal or just play it safe? Well, that was quite a conundrum.

-----

Ivy laid in bed by herself, sipping a Coors Light. Chelsea had left earlier. Neither of them wanted to go past second base since they'd probably never see each other again.

Ivy didn't even bother to peruse her abilities. She knew the one. Goes To 11 boosted any and all performance abilities she used. It was a super clutch, high level passive she had just learned from her Raconteur class. With that boosted she'd put out more effective buffs, and more quickly. It was the only ability she had that increased the speed at which she could start buffing. A no brainer.

-----

Stupid sexy Jun, Mercy thought, as she rolled over in her bed. He was always dropping huge bombshells and then acting like it was nothing. "Oh hey, I just got super powers, no big deal." "Bought you a house, lol!" "Ah nothing to worry about but I got infected with the super virus." "I think I accidentally got amazing armor without working for it." "I just figured out how to do this thing with my tongue, nothing noteworthy." Stupid Jun.

Mercy grumbled at her himbo. Intelligence to the moon, Wisdom of a half empty bucket. Whatever. Not that she liked that about him! Sure, she did like the look of his face when he finally figured out something that related to actual human behavior. Sure, she liked when something obvious went right over his head. Even now, though he claimed to be at 100 Wisdom, she estimated that just brought him up to slightly above average.

If she were feeling generous, she would give him that a lifetime of low Wisdom followed by 2 weeks of high Wisdom wouldn't give you the life experience needed to actually understand people. If she were less generous, he was just a big dummy. A big, loving, sexy, Korean, strong, smart, handsome dummy who was actually trying to be a better person. What kind of man actually tried to be a better person? That's not a thing guys do!

Stupid Jun with his flat stomach and house he got her and his constant proclamations of love and his total support of her hobbies and interests and his absolute worship of her very imperfect body and his respect for her shitty past and him not ever mentioning all the scars on her back. Scars that Jun kissed and touched just like any other part of her. Scars that he accepted without reservation, knowing that they were a part of her that he wouldn't avoid or ignore, but instead treat as part of the whole of her. Stupid Jun!

Stupid Jun. Why wasn't he there with her now?

Mercy sighed. Abilities. She had to think about abilities.

Her main gimmick was her costumes, and those came via the Witch class and its Costumed subclass. The problem was that she gained individual abilities that governed each aspect of an individual costume one by one. Sure, she could boost her Strength while wearing the Oni Princess Kaguya outfit. But that wouldn't help her bamboo powers in that outfit, and wouldn't help her in other outfits.

She had quite a few enchantments from taking the Imbuer/Runist/Enchanter classes. Most of them were on her clothes, which transferred onto whatever costume she transformed into, which was handy. Upgrading one of her Toughness enchantments would make her nearly unbreakable. She could also upgrade her Strength, Agility, Reflexes, Dexterity or Memory that way. So she had quite a few options.

But that was sort of the problem. She had a lot of okay options, but not any great options. She didn't have a box of tricks like Quins, she didn't have support stuff like Ivy and Odysseus. She didn't have Jun's firepower. She was second best at whatever she was doing.

She would talk it over with Jun and the others. If they picked their abilities first it might give her a direction to go in. She could fill whatever gap was left over.

But that was tomorrow. Tomorrow, dungeon break day. Tomorrow, the day Jun would finish getting the levels he needed to cure Scourge. Tomorrow, the day she'd get a better grasp of her role in the team.

Tomorrow, the day she'd have nightmares about for years.

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