PenguinKills
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Chapter 48 - Jinx
🕑 Added 2024-06-08 20:58:30 +0000 UTCIt took a long time for my arm to heal but it wasn't as bad as the last time. [Meditation] eased the burden on the healers and boosted my vitality to heal the wound faster. I received feeling back in the hand after a few hours and fully healed a few more after.
Since the wave ended so... explosively, we had a lot of cleanup to do. The wall needed to be repaired as the blast was close enough to damage it, but that was only a matter of points, not manpower.
The trench had caved in but at this point, it was more superficial than anything. As the beasts got stronger the threat of the trench waned. It wasn't the insurmountable obstacle it once was.
There were still traps that we made that would need to be reset after the wave and we would have to purchase more from the store to make up for the ones we used. It seemed the threat of an F-rank was higher than we thought.
None of that concerned me though. It seemed a little arrogant to say, but I left that to the others. I needed to focus on [Meditation] and healing more than I needed to help clean up. I noticed my thought process changing the longer that this hell went on.
Before I would think that I needed to do my fair share and help pitch in, now, I knew I had better things to do and to leave that task to the others.
This wave brought with it the needed points to finally upgrade the wall. 250,000 points was a lot to save up but over 4 waves worth of monsters, it became feasible.
The clear rewards just kept climbing every wave and resulted in the bulk of our points to spend. 27 people getting over 1,000 points each was a lot of points. Someone did the math and figured out the pattern behind where the number came from.
It took the lowest-level monster that the wave spawned and multiplied its point value by 10. So if the lowest level in the wave was level 10, it would take the points it was worth, 100, and multiply it by 10. This resulted in a wave completion reward of 1,000 points for every person who participated.
I thought it was wrong to go based on the lowest level instead of the highest level but I wasn't the one who made it. If there was someone who made it.
I knew that not every group in this tutorial was a family and that not every family was as close as ours was, and that made me wonder what would happen to the points of people who didn't pull their weight.
Say a group had people who didn't fight or were bad at it, would they force them to give up the points from completing the wave? I could see this going badly if the ties between group members were weaker.
I didn't much care how other people dealt with it. We had our method and it was working so far. 50% was enough for now and they could keep the rest. If more was needed later, we would ask for more.
A small piece of me wanted to hoard their points so I could buy more skills, but that wouldn't be right. We weren't that desperate yet. Plus it wouldn't result in that many skills. After the two I bought at 5,000 points each, the cost went up again.
The system seemed hell-bent on not making this easy. 25,000 for a skill was outrageous. I knew one that I had to save up for already and I cringed every time I thought about the price increasing again.
Admittedly, 4 skills were a lot to be able to purchase. Taking into account that you only got 6 per rank, that was 2/3rds the amount of an entire rank. I was just biased at the ease of the first few.
A part of me did wonder how much these skills would go for outside of the tutorial. The supply had to be huge based on the sheer number of worlds in the multiverse. The alien said in the class that there were an uncountable number of worlds in the multiverse and trying to come up with a number was futile.
New ones formed and others were destroyed enough to make counting inaccurate. Plus, integrations created a massive influx of new worlds and there were 150 of those before making ours the 151st. Being the 151st had a nice ring to it.
It was said that skill shards could be found in dungeons and skill books could be made by a person of significant power and mastered the skill. I wasn't sure how many dungeons were on a planet but even if it was one, that was still a lot of skill shards.
Even with the massive supply, that said nothing of the demand. On uncountable worlds there had to be uncountable people who needed skills. Common skills might not be that hard to find, but even thinking about rare or higher skills made me shutter.
With my current amount of wealth, it would be a while before I would be in a position to worry about that. I still wasn't clear on how to actually earn money. Hunting beast for materials had to pay well but how much was a beast worth?
Especially the low-ranked ones I would be hunting for the foreseeable future. I could make things with my profession, but there had to be trillions of blacksmiths in the multiverse.
Ugh, this was making my head hurt. There had to be rules to it or low leveled worlds would be screwed.
The one skill I knew I needed was [Mana Engraving] or something similar so that I could push my profession toward the enchanter side. I wasn't confident that it would work but it wouldn't hurt to try. At worst I would be a blacksmith with a rudimentary ability to enchant.
The skill cost was steep but ultimately worth it in my opinion. 25,000 was a lot to spend on a maybe but I didn't know what else to spend it on. I could make my own armor and weapons so I didn't have to buy them, I already had most of the class skills I currently needed.
Buying more information would be useful but that's what the rest of my family wanted to spend their points on. They needed to know what was happening to the earth. I was curious, but not enough to buy the information.
We would find out in three months regardless.
I would also have to buy the Enchanter profession starter just for good measure. If it was anything like the blacksmithing one I read then it should give me some valuable insight into evolving in that direction.
None of that I needed to worry about currently. I needed to fix the blank spot on my status and I only had 1 more level of leeway to get it done. I wasn't entirely certain how evolving worked and if it would generate the options once I hit level 25 or if I could still do more to change the outcome.
I didn't want to leave anything to chance though, so I wanted to make sure I had a law before hitting level 25.
Evolving was weird. When I hit level 10 I got my last class skill for my H-ranked class then I got the choice to evolve. After evolving, I got another skill. Two skills for one level seemed like a lot.
I wonder if the lack of requirements is the reason. In the class about the basics, the alien said that there were requirements to evolve your rank. Maybe there was a larger time gap between reaching the maximum level for a rank and when you evolved.
If you hit level 100 and maxed out your class but were short on the requirements to evolve, it might take a while before you were ready.
Plus the extra skill was like a reward for meeting the requirements. It's like a reward, Ha.
Regardless, that's what I was doing currently. Packing stuff to make the trip into the mountains. I didn't want to bother Austin with it since I didn't know how long it would take, so I anticipated going alone.
Based on how difficult the boss was to fight I planned to avoid altercations and avoid the attention of any of the beasts. I planned to reach where the snow and ice felt right and meditate on it.
I knew the monsters wouldn't be as hard to fight as the boss since they wouldn't be as powerful, but it was still something I wanted to ignore. I wouldn't get any time to 'gain enlightenment' if I spent the whole time fighting.
I still wasn't great at the meditation part but it was my best idea. I had more of a clue about what to do after the boss fight but I wasn't exactly certain. It was something I felt before I upgraded my skill during my desperate fight with the boss.
It was when I needed to make the ice stronger that I glimpsed something odd. I was trying to make my ice denser and colder to make it as strong as possible and I had a feeling I was brushing against something completely different than a skill upgrade.
It felt more fundamental and rooted deeply in the laws of physics if that made any sense. Wait, is it even considered the laws of physics anymore? Those were thoroughly broken and magic danced on their grave.
Everything we thought we knew went out the window when Mana arrived. Flinging fireballs around wasn't something the laws of physics were built around. There still had to be rules on how everything worked but they wouldn't be called the laws of physics anymore.
It would be something more like the Laws of reality.
As I had the thought, I wanted to slap myself. I was being stupid.
They were literally called Laws.
No shit, Sherlock.
I didn't dwell on my stupidity any longer and gathered everything that I thought I might need.
An extra cloak made out of wolf pelt for the weather, food for a two-day trip. I still needed to be back in time for the 16th wave. A canteen of water I purchased from the store. Not the water part, just the canteen.
With my stats, sleeping outside wouldn't be an issue, but it still wouldn't be comfortable. A small tent and bedroll were enough to fix that issue.
I didn't plan on fighting but I would be a fool not to bring my axe. I still needed to work on a better weapon but that would come after the time crunch of my evolution was behind me.
This would be the last axe I would use and it made my vision linger on it as I picked it up. It was my companion in a lot of fights, but it would be the last. They were becoming too impractical. My strength was too much for the metal to handle and I wasn't keeping up with my blacksmithing skills to compensate for the difference. Hammers would be easier.
If I were a better blacksmith I could probably make it work, but I wasn't. Real blacksmiths haven't been a thing since the Industrial Revolution. They still exist, don't get me wrong, but aren't as prominent as they once were.
Forged in Fire was a great show to watch, but nothing for industrial use was made by a blacksmith anymore. Machines took over that process and have only been growing in usage.
Automation was a marvel to watch but the side effects were hard to ignore. How much of a step up would we have if we still did things by hand? We wouldn't be going into these professions with zero knowledge if blacksmiths and apothecaries were still around.
It was a vain thought to have but that didn't make it untrue. In the grand scheme of things, the impracticality of artisan workers would of limited industry too much for the benefits now to be worth it.
I considered taking my blacksmithing tools but figured I wouldn't need them. There wasn't a way for me to make a fire hot enough for it to be worth it and carrying an anvil was impractical. Plus, I still wasn't planning on fighting anything.
If I didn't plan on using my weapon then I wouldn't need my tools to repair it.
Did I mention that I didn't plan on fighting anything?
--AN--
If anyone is curious about the amount of points earned each wave I can post the math for you. There is an equation I use and they aren't just made up.
Comments
Alexander C Hyde
In the grand scheme of things, the impracticality of artisan workers would (have)of limited industry too much for the benefits now to be worth it.
Alexander C Hyde
Common skills might not be that hard to find, but even thinking about rare or higher skills made me (shudder)shutter.
