B3 C39: Too Many Skills

With Verin’s impromptu visit to Emer’Thalis all taken care of, things settled down for a while. That was not to say, however, that the next few weeks were idle ones for me.

Part of that was just the same old same old, though slightly reprised: My wood class had at last begun its third and final segment, and we were getting started on construction work. That in and of itself was noteworthy -- apparently there was a joint program between the Chamber of Nobility and the Chamber of Commons whereby nobles with vassal settlements could submit public-good work requests. If they got approved, classes like mine would get sent to construct them for free.

All that to say, I’d been spending a lot of time getting teleported to some random noble’s settlement and building an orphanage with the rest of my class lately. It struck me as odd given what I knew about the price of using teleports and our relative inexperience, but given how built-out Sylum already was, I wasn’t sure how else we’d be able to train.

Resistance Training’s new twist wasn’t so much something new as it was the absence of something old. Warram had abruptly stopped coming to class. Odd considering how much of a fuss he’d made about me letting him enroll, but I wasn’t going to complain. It did mean that I was out a partner, but if anything, that just gave me more time to work on my Mental Resistance and finishing up my Mithridatism I quest.

Dungeon-run-wise, we completed a singular additional run, bringing our clear-count up to four out of five. We’d had a near call with the boss this time after I’d been a bit overzealous with my arrows, causing it to ignore Alara for a time, but thankfully, I was more than speedy enough to play cat and mouse for a bit while we got things back on track.

Mining was still just mining. As it turned out, hitting a wall with a pickaxe didn’t change all that much from day to day.

Where things truly took a turn, though, was in my final class with Advisor Flithus.

The three class points I’d netted from leveling up and getting dark magic to 20 were spent after only a short discussion, two going into Spellsword/Swordspell while I threw the remaining point into Force Dispersal. Neither had called out to me the first time I’d read their descriptions, but I was coming around to them both: Once I assigned the full five points into the first, all of my damage would get a 50% boost, and the latter had been proving its worth in the metal dungeon. Usually Alara kept it from mattering, but the few instances where I was smashed into with large amounts of metal, I had to admit that not getting immediately pasted was kind of neat.

When it came to my non-class skills, things got just a touch more interesting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Holy shit! Wait! I’m doing that again!” I readied myself, pushing down my body’s hesitance at what I was about to do. Logically, I knew I had nothing to fear -- even if I failed, there was no chance that I’d get seriously injured. With my Hardy ability from hitting the Constitution threshold, theoretically I could even survive being beheaded if I was healed fast enough. A broken neck wasn’t really a concern past being kind of horrifying to think about.

With that cheery thought, I got a hold of my balance, crouched my legs down, and jumped. As soon as I was in the air, I twisted backwards, spinning about until my feet were right back where they’d started. I pushed them downwards as I fell feeling as they smacked down onto the cushy mat I’d been practicing on. Having successfully completed the maneuver, I threw my arms up as I stuck the landing, doing my best impression of an Olympic gymnast.

That was right: I could do a backflip now!

Acrobatics has reached level 4!

A slow clap filled the tiny practice room Flithus had secured for me, the aged advisor sitting off to the side. “Well done, well done. I will admit, I do wish I could move about like that. Although, I imagine if I attempted a flip like that, you’d quickly be looking for a new advisor.”

Sadly, I’d have to agree with him on that one. Unless I was sorely mistaken, advising classes weren’t well known for their Dexterity.

When it came to me, on the other hand, it was a wonder I hadn’t thought to try something like this sooner. With my Strength, my jumps were far higher than they had any right to be, and with my Dexterity, I found twisting my body about to almost be second nature. Perception came in handy too, my proprioception giving me a nice boost to my own body awareness and balance.

All that to say, it didn’t take particularly long for me to learn how to do a flip. Which was understandable considering that Acrobatics was one of the most commonplace 15 Dexterity starter skills out there. It apparently paired well with the 25 Dexterity skill Contortion which essentially all Dexterity-based classes picked up at some point. I would have possibly been annoyed at the reminder that I still hadn’t hit 25 Dexterity yet, but how could I be in a bad mood right now when I could do flips?

On some level, I knew my recent acrobatic stunt shouldn’t have felt as enjoyable or impressive as I was making it out to be. A backflip was something plenty of people could do with entirely normal stats. Especially compared to casting actual magic, a little flip shouldn’t have been anything special.

And yet!

I launched myself backwards, completing another backflip with ease.

So fucking cool.

And this was just with the skill at level 4. What sorts of ridiculous stunts could I pull if I got the skill higher?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

A singular long and narrow table split the room into two, with a dozen people seated on both sides, each of them paired with a partner directly across from them. Presently, I was sitting towards the end, the woman across from me chatting away with an envious social gusto.

“Hobbies? Well, tons, to be quite honest. I’m quite into hiking, if you’d believe it. All sorts of sporty things, really. Recreational archery. A bit of boxing. I dabble in all of it, really. Oh! But those are just pastimes, you know? My real passion would have to be art. I have a piece hanging in one of the museums right now, if you’d believe it. I’m even considering getting a class change to pursue it full time. That or cooking. Or baking. Or magic, of course, but that’s less of a hobby and more of a pursuit, you know? It’s just so hard to choose one thing!”

I nodded mutely the entire time, stunned by the long list. How the hell does she find time for all of that? And how would she be good at it all? From what I’d seen, most people leaned heavily into the skills that matched their dominant stats the best, and I doubted a level 12 Debutante would have the needed stats for all of that.

Plus, if she was here, that meant she had to have at least 15 Charisma. That was the point, after all. The gathering I was partaking in was purely meant to help people level up their Charisma skills in a low-stakes environment, sort of like a faux speed dating and friend-making event. Flithus had sent me here to level up Conversation.

Or rather, he’d sent me here to level up Conversation and Flirt, but fake flirting with strangers wasn’t exactly my idea of fun.

I spent a while longer listening to my current partner rattle off a host of impressive achievements, somehow making me feel boring in comparison despite being a god-chosen Protagonist. With how few words I was getting in, it came as something of a shock when I ended up succeeding in the exact goal that had brought me here.

You have reached level 10 in Conversation.

Congratulations! You have reached the Initiate rank in Conversation!

You have been granted the standard augment for this skill.

Augment of Small Talk

Aids you in coming up with and responding to small talk. Meaningless banter becomes much simpler for you.

NOTE: Conversation is not considered class aligned. Future growth will greatly slow down.

If nothing reality shattering, I supposed it was a useful augment. I didn’t consider myself someone who was incapable of holding a conversation, but I could recall a number of awkward situations where I’d been forced to chat with someone I didn’t really know, and a bit of help would have been appreciated.

Shortly thereafter -- after the Debutante had told me about the most recent book she’d written, the award-winning tea house she’d briefly worked at, and the summer abroad she’d spent trekking through a magic-filled jungle -- it was time to switch partners. Maybe it was a bit rude, but I found myself feeling relieved to be moving on. Still, considering I’d leveled a skill, I made sure to thank her as I shuffled to the next seat.

“I actually managed to hit the next rank in Conversation from that, so thank you! Hope you got some good experience for the skill too.”

Rather than smile and return the thanks, she shook her head and waved the thanks away.

“Conversation? Oh no, dear. I’m just here to level Deception. You should try it! It’s remarkably fun.”

Momentarily stunned, I didn’t even catch it when my next conversational partner asked me a question. Even when we did start to talk, I kept one ear out for the Debutante’s new conversation, now unsurprised to hear her list out completely different fictitious hobbies and achievements.

A question from my new partner -- a middle-aged man with an intense stare -- at last managed to refocus me. “So? What do you do for work?”

I considered explaining that I was currently a student, but before the words could form, I thought back to what my previous partner had said.

I froze for a moment before internally shrugging to myself. I mean. Might as well.

“I’m a marine biologist,” I decided. “I study all sorts of fish.”

Deception has reached level 5!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’m told this one is a touch disconcerting, so let me know if we need to stop.” For our latest skill acquisition, we were back in Flithus’ office, the advisor holding a large number of gems which he then spread out across his desk. “Are you ready?”

I nodded, and with that, he channeled a bit of mana into the first of the gems. It levitated a few millimeters off of the desk before an image formed before it, two men facing one another. They began moving, holding a conversation with one another, and the corresponding sounds emanated from the gem as well.

In and of itself, that was nothing to write home about. I’d already seen communication devices and mirror gems -- even if not overly common, I would have assumed there were video recording devices.

Then, however, Flithus activated a second gem. Another scene. Another set of sounds.

A third. A fourth. A fifth. He tossed some of them to the corners of the room, letting the sights and sounds surround me. A few of the gems even had richer sensory experiences, scents wafting off them and filling the office.

Throughout it all, I did my best to pay attention to as much as I could.

To start with, I failed miserably.

It would have been nice to say that I let all the sensations wash over me, letting my brain passively start separating them out, but the truth was the exact opposite: It was a painfully active effort, spreading my focus in as many different directions as it would go.

“Have you written the reports for the-”

A swordsman slashed forward, cleaving into a grisly monster, and then-

Vanilla and cinnamon. A hint of baking spices, plus-

“We’ll now demonstrate how to properly assist someone who appears to be choking. Firstly-”

A group of dancers pirouette gracefully before-

All of it mixed together, monsters choking on baking spaces, swordsmen writing reports while leaping into grand jetés, a boss berating an underling for slashing into him with a blade, the resulting blood smelling of citrus and flowers.

Right when I thought I was making some small semblance of progress, Flithus activated another gem, tossing it right at me. Much closer than the others, it overpowered the other sounds, scents, sights. It was all I could do not to close my eyes to focus, but that would ultimately defeat the purpose.

Bit by bit, however, I pulled each sensation apart, siloing them away based on their origin. To start, I did my best to block off a few of the gems, flitting through the remainder and giving each a split second of attention. I shuffled through them faster and faster until just barely I started to follow each, then added in the other gems slowly, one by one.

Some unknowable amount of time later, it all became much much easier as I at last received the notification I’d been after.

You have learned a new skill: Split Focus.

Increases your ability to take in and process large numbers of disparate stimuli and sensations, separating and filtering them without a loss of understanding.

Prerequisites:

25 Intelligence

25 Perception

Unfortunately, the skill still required some effort to use, and the moment that I read the notification, I lost all my earlier progress. The room returned to its previous state of discordant nonsense.

Much to both of our reliefs, once I told Flithus I’d gained the skill, he turned all the devices off.

“Good! Now, acquiring the skill is known to be a bit trickier than leveling it up. For training, I’d recommend finding a nice packed restaurant. Listen to people converse. See if you can pick out what each table is having just based on the smell. Order something with complex flavors and try to isolate each one. And I have a few baubles with different textures you can play with to stimulate your sense of touch if needed. Understood?”

So, basically I was supposed to go out for a nice meal and eavesdrop on people.

Man. What brutal training, huh?

Well, there was nothing for it. If that was my homework, then I’d simply have to bear it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As the number of skills I gained gradually climbed upwards, I found myself losing track of them all. I knew that I still likely had fewer skills than most people my age, but in all likelihood, I was getting pretty close to catching up. After all, very few people at my level would have hit 15 in every stat, which meant the number of skills I had open to me was abnormally high.

Still, normal or not, it was all starting to be a bit of a brainsore. And more than that, it was an eyesore. I opened up my stat sheet, wincing in disgust as it just kept going on and on and on. In addition to the more basic important skills that would help me augment my stats, I’d also grabbed a host of more situational skills, all of them now listed out before me: Running, Strength Training, Carry, Appearance Alteration, Acrobatics, Split Focus, Breath Control, Stamina Recovery, Enhanced Computation, Jumping, and a host of other odd and rarely useful skills. In fact, I’d even picked up a Digestion skill that helped with overeating and stomach capacity, the result of a recent restaurant run where they’d brought me unlimited bread. I was glad to have them, but they also didn’t change my day to day life that much.

A very small handful of those skills had hit the Initiate rank as well, their augments similarly being nothing too groundbreaking. Running had been the first skill I’d gained from Flithus to reach that mark, and as was probably expected, its augment… made me a faster runner. Surprise!

At the very least, I was glad the status sheet didn’t list out each augment along with the corresponding skill, or the entire thing would have been book length at this point.

Even so, it was a pain. The next time I saw Flithus, I brought up my prodigious character sheet, less to find a solution and more just to complain.

It was something of a surprise, then, when the elderly advisor brought his palm up to his forehead, gently smacking himself with an accompanying exclamation.

“Ah! Forgive me. I should have guessed it wouldn’t be something you knew, but it’s something so well-known, it didn’t even occur to me. Here. Let me show you how to filter it.”

Filter it? That’s a thing? I’d always assumed the system and its sheets were fairly inviolable.

As Flithus quickly proved to me, however, that was anything but true. A few pointed thoughts towards the sheet later, and it dropped any skills that I hadn’t recently used. There were also options to filter out skills by level, consolidate the display for similar skills, and ultimately streamline the entire layout. I also set it to only show me the level of my highest skill in each category. By the time I was done playing around with the layout, I ended up with a table that only took up a fraction of the space it had before, all while displaying much more relevant information to me.

Simply thinking full status sheet could still bring up the old info, but by default, now I’d get the simpler version. Testing it all out one last time, I summoned it up.

Weapons & Armor: Spears (15), Small Blades, Archery, Axes...

Movement: Dodge (7), Acrobatics, Stealth

Spell Classes: All basic mana types + Mental Magic

Spells: Dark Sphere, 9 Initiate, 10 Novice spells

Magic: Advanced Internal Mana Manipulation (11), Stygian Citadel...

Resistances: Trauma (16), Mental, Bleed, Poison, Pain...

Detection: Detect Secret (11), God's Eye, Detect Trap, Split Focus

Craft: Cooking (9), Construction, Woodworking, Mining...

Social: Conversation (10), Etiquette, Dancing, Deception...

General: Drinking (11), Reading, Writing...

Muuuuuch better. Thanks Flithus.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With both my skill acquisition and my classes going smoothly, I soon found myself burdened by the very daunting load of free time. Unfortunately for my skill levels, there was only so much training a person could do without losing their mind.

I considered filling it with the usuals: drinking with Alara, inviting Emin out for a meal, chatting with Verin, or even going dancing again. On second thought, however, I realized there was something new I’d been meaning to do which was perhaps a bit more important.

Namely, dealing with my settlement’s new trading post. According to Verin, Emer’Thalis was stuck buying staple goods until I made contracts that would let them buy and sell anything else. I planned to ask her for some help on that front, as I had a pretty poor idea on how to go about setting all those contracts up.

Still, it probably wouldn’t hurt to do some looking. As much as getting contracts wasn’t truly urgent, I did feel kind of bad for everyone back in Emer’Thalis stuck without access to a real marketplace.

Plus, it had been a while since I’d visited the Artisan District.

I guess that settles it, then. A few contract inquiries, and then a shopping trip!