Chapter 56: Numbers Burr

  ***

  “What do you mean wait to spend my experience?”

  “Exactly what I said. Trust me on this, you are so close to ranking up your glyphcraft skill, once you do, new options will be opened up to you.”

  “You just want to try convincing me to increase my wisdom stat after dangling the carrot of new glyphs and enchantments in front of my face.” He could practically smell the scam that Obby was cooking up.

  “No…”

  “That’s what I thought-”

  “Alex, you just spent three days ignoring me completely. You know how rude that is? Just humor me on this one okay.” Obby seemed desperate.

  Looking back over his stats, he could see that his training over the past days had actually made some serious progress without even spending his experience points yet.

  The biggest moves were in his intelligence and willpower. Which made a lot of sense given Sylvaris had him focusing on aether control and mastering his spellcasting, thus working his intelligence. The willpower change came from his advancement in the [Condensing Spiral] technique.

  What was even a cherry on top, was the fact the new aether gathering technique seemed to already be accelerating his [Aether Attuned Body] just has he had hoped. His status screen confirmed it.

  It was only a small percentage change, but given that he had not been actively trying to improve this aspect of his ability at all over the last days, it meant that progress was simply passive progression from draining and refilling the energy in his body.

  Alex sighed.

  “Fine, lets get to training.” He settled on the grass and tucked his legs underneath him.

  “Oh perfect!” Alex’s vision was filled with translucent images of glyphs in the matter of seconds. “This is the containment glyph we went over before, it can combine easily with elemental glyphs depending on the desired effect…”

  The lesson went into full force and Alex found himself beginning to use his triple braided [Condensing Spiral] technique while Obby spoke. The mental strain it took to keep the technique active was not nearly as high now that he had become more practiced in it’s use, and keeping it active once he got started was easy enough if he followed the breathing pattern.

  The minutes ticked by and he found the aether gem embedded in his bracer now full of energy, forcing him to move on to the new one Sylvaris had given him, which he had already pulled out to cradle in his hands.

  Minutes turned into ten. Ten minutes turned into an hour. One hour into two… Obby was still deep into his lesson when it happened.

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  “The disruption under this scenario would have to be alleviated by—”

  Alex’s body suddenly erupted with aether, forming a thin aura an inch from his skin. He immediately stopped his gathering technique, unsure of what was happening. He could feel the muscles and tissue in his body all seemed to exhale at once, loosening, and then his muscles snapped taught. Every bit of energy in the aura around him collapsed into his body, suffusing his tissues. His body inhaled it like a seagull going after unattended french fries at the beach.

  Once it was over, he was left sitting there feeling his entire body tingling. He knew something had changed, and it didn’t take long for him to find out what.

  “Holy fuck.” Alex muttered. This was huge, it could save him thousands of experience points, let alone the amount of increase to his power it would mean. “Will my stats increase every time I push this ability another ten percent?”

  It was a question with a potentially tantalizing answer.

  “That is surprisingly good. Much stronger than other body cultivation methods you would have access to at this level.” Obby expressed surprise once Alex showed him the changes as well. “That should not be all you have though. Look at the rest of your notifications.”

  He didn’t answer, he simply continued to mentally scroll through the notifications he had ignored during the last hour.

  “You knew about this, that’s why you wanted me to wait on spending my experience?” Alex started to understand Obby’s thinking.

  “Not the complete reason, but yes. The skill upgrade does open up new possibilities for you. So far you have been treating [Glyphcraft] passively as though it was a knowledge databank. But there are applications that are open to you that you do not yet realize.” Obby began projecting images into his mind once more, showing him a version of himself as if looking at a videogame character creation screen.

  “First of all, that new aether gemstone can be implanted into your bracer by your own hand now. I recommend that first, as it would help with your restricted energy pool.” The mental image highlighted his bracer, showing a new gemstone being placed in the leather an inch above the first one.

  “Next, we need to start planning how we want to enchant and alter your body. Extensive work, such as creating a new energy channel system would provide the largest benefits, but may not be your best choice right now.” Obby showed the inside of his body and a new circulatory system appeared inside the image, it mimicked his blood vessels, but contained spirals and patterns similar to glyphs. “ Instead, for now it would be best to supplement your aether gathering by modifying your essence gate.”

  Obby zoomed in on an image of Alex’s neck, and the aether gate which connected him to the ambient energy of the universe. It was the key to letting him absorb aether with his [Condensing Spiral] technique. The gate was nearly ethereal, complicated and robust. Obby began showing addition lines, sigils and glyphs that could be added, increasing the power and efficiency of the gate through the use of his [Glyphcraft] skill.

  “Okay, I agree with you on that, especially since we know what progressing with this ability can do for me.” He pulled up his status screen once more. “In the meantime, I’m pushing my Vitality up to the next threshold. We can figure out the rest from there.”

  ***

  “It wasn’t as bad this time, I think.” Alex muttered as he put his clothes back on. The refinement process was beyond messy, so he made sure to remove his clothes before going through it whenever he could help it. Pushing his Vitality to ten had caused a new refinement round, expelling impurities from his body in the form of more black goop.

  “The first one is always the worst. You get used to it, even if you don’t want to.”

  Alex simply nodded and pulled his backpack on after his armor was fastened down. He looked down at his left bracer, and thought about the gemstone in his bracelet’s storage space.

  “We’ll get to that next, finish spending your points before you forget. And you know you will forget.”

  Alex scoffed, but he knew that the damn pebble was right.

  He mentally spent the rest of his points and looked over the results of his progress on his status screen.

  “What do you think?” He asked.

  “Looking much better than before, that’s at the very least.”

  “Great. Let’s get moving then, everyone is still waiting for us.” Alex started walking once more, his eyes set on the East.

  “They are fine, your friends I mean. Kobolds are dumb, but they don’t kill needlessly. Like I said, more than likely they are just being used for labor in their little tunnels.”

  “Either way, I don’t want to leave them there any longer than I can help it. We are moving,” he pulled out the gemstone he got from Sylvaris. “You can guide me through how to implant this on the way.”

  “Oh that’s true. Okay then, here’s what you need to do…”