Chapter 23
Wes and the girls ended up going over his one use of Cleanse. The girls came into a silent agreement as well and convinced him not to use any of his abilities for the time being. They shared the finer points of normal leveling with Wes, as he had hoped that maybe more information could be gleaned from it, but aside from a few interesting bits of information, such as normal Levelers get 125,000 status points to apply per level. Nothing really applied to him.
He also found it curious that people usually applied the stats to their status bar in even numbers. The standard in the universe was 25,000 chunks to one of the five stats. Which helped explain Phony’s status.
Dozel offered to share her full status, but he declined. It would mean nothing to him. He could read it, but the concept as a whole wouldn’t apply.
Over the next four True days, Wes used Deposit once right before he was to level just to see what it would do. And aside from confirming that his savings rounded to the nearest whole number, he regretted it after doing the math. It was not worth it. He would have been better off just leveling up.
He had done that on the second True day, with the girls reminding him a few hours before the end of every twenty-fourth hour in a True day. The girls had not just been sitting idle either. They had gone off and done recon missions separately from each other. Once, they went together to scout further in a direction that Phony had discovered held signs of the Clans. But after some searching, they turned back up claiming to have found nothing.
With none of the three having a water ability, they would have to move soon in search of water. They had been given just enough water to last them a week. They would be able to stretch that out for close to a month if the girls went without due to their levels.
With water being the pressing motivation for moving, the three agreed to move toward the end of the week. They would go in the direction that offered the best signs of life. Knowing that if they went that direction, they would have their best chance at water.
Wes had observed the girls being a little less prickly with each other over the last day. He took that as a sign of them settling into what they agreed to. He couldn’t say he would be okay with sharing his wife with another man, but he grew up on a planet that was slightly more monogamous. From what he gathered from his conversations with Nia, that was not really the standard.
Either way, he hoped that the peace amongst the girls would last.
Toward the end of the fourth day, Dozel told him that the end of the twenty-fourth hour was approaching. Not that he needed to be filled in. He had been doing nothing for days. He would stare at his status for hours on end. As he got halfway to his next level, he knew that it had been a day based on the math he had done before arriving on this planet. As he got close to his level-up, he knew the second day was almost over.
He told the girls about how his level-ups had been. They both gathered around him as he got the notification for his third level.
You have Leveled up.
Wager life itself. Your reward will forever be proportionate to your risk.
Just as he had with Nia, he explained what he saw to the girls. Drawing a poor version in the soil so they had context. Wes had hoped for the buttons to have changed the amount wagered so he had a chance at better rewards, but they were the same as before. So he gave the lever a pull after placing his wager on a day.
Ability Unlocked: Stopwatch
Asking aloud to the girls, he asked. “Do any of you know what a Stopwatch is?”
Before he finished his sentence, a familiar pain he had not felt exploded in his head. The information he was looking for became apparent as if it had always been there.
Quickly, Wes opened his status.
Name: Wesley of 29744C
Race: Human
Age: 27
Unique abilities: Imperial over Metric, Back in My Day(Active)
Abilities: Deposit, Eternal Spark, Cleanse, Stopwatch
Skills: N/A
Achievement(s): Bloody Soul, Pragmatic Savant
Trait(s): 3
Current Status: Blessed
Level 3
Savings: 2,532,409
Next Level: 1866.24
Level 3 Exp Per Sec: .0072
Current Exp: .0792
Phony had gone to say that she didn’t know what he was speaking of when she saw Wes grab for his head. Mild alarm overtook her and Dozel before it seemed to pass.
Wes assured them that he was fine and shared his status with the girls. They both nodded while they held their breath.
“Your leveling time does increase by a day with every level. I can’t wait to see if you can get standard experience.” Phony said while smiling.
Dozel nodded along, “I don’t know what a stopwatch is, but can you tell what it does?
Wes nodded back. “I know what it does now. My Unique ability filled me in.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Both girls looked at each other in confusion. Both realized that his ability had now said “(Active)”. Their faces contorted in disbelief even more.
Wes held up his hand with a grin stretching from ear to ear, “I know, but that is not what is most important to me right now. My new ability is not all I have been given. When it happened last time, I wrote it off to me not doing my math right or not knowing something yet, but I had an idea of what it might be. Look at my savings. Do any of you remember what it used to be?”
Phony gasped. “Wasn’t it around 2,500,000 before?”
Wes answered. “It was 2,507,336 to be exact. And it's increased by an amount I had estimated it would.”
Looking at the girls at the edge of their dug-out seats made Wes laugh, “It has increased exactly one percent of its total. It did the same for the second level. I was hoping that the percentage would increase, but it's stayed the same. If it were 2 percent, it would have increased by a little over fifty thousand. Increasing by twenty-five thousand with every percentage point after that. Sadly, it wasn’t to be.” Wes was nodding in satisfaction. “I am sure you can see that even a one percent increase in my experience would be insane for my growth. I thought I would make mastering my abilities my priority, but I think I should prioritize being stingy with how I use my abilities to maximize my savings. I will, of course, rush through these first twenty-five levels, but I am sure that you can see that the more I save, the more it will stack up in the future.”
The girls sat in contemplation long enough for Wes’s grin to fade from his cheeks. Dozel, being the first to speak this time. “It is hard not to look at you as a commodity, knowing how easily you will level in the future. But if all your stats are in one big bucket, it makes sense that you will have something to fall back on as you level up.”
Phony added, “If our kids get that trait, I wonder if it will make leveling up even easier for them.”
Wes replied, “I am not sure, I think my trait only works like your mom said.”
“Still, I can’t wait to find out.” Phony shared. Her cheeks grew rosy as she came to the realization of what she had just implied.
Wes wanted to spend the next few hours doing calculations to see how much of a savings he could build up, but he had a few things on his mind about Phony’s status that were bothering him. Too much just didn’t align with what he thought was intuitive thinking when it came to one’s status.
“Hey Phony, why can’t you just spam your abilities all day with how high your Mana is? And why does it matter that your dexterity is so high? The numbers just don’t make sense to me.”
Phony lit up with excitement, “Finding the secrets that lie in our status is one of the most exciting things about leveling. Dexterity and Strength are the outliers. It doesn’t scale numerically, even if it is based on the number. I am not 9,000,000 times stronger than someone with 1 in strength. More like 9 times stronger. With each million making my body more hardy at the same time. Dexterity is much the same scaling. A lot of studying and research has gone into this subject. The real answer is we don’t know, but we can make a few guesses. One guess is that numbers are so large to both cap a Pather’s growth and encourage specializations.”
Phony waited to see if Wes wanted to ask any questions, but when none came, she continued. “Health, Mana, and Stamina work in much the same way, but they also have a component that is only available for the Pather to see, much like how you are the only one able to see your trait description. For example, my Stamina is only three-quarters of the way full. It is among the most valuable information you can know about someone. If you knew how much Health or Mana someone had left, you would be able to know when the perfect time to attack another was. Even a specialized seer could never find the exact amount you had left of those three. The last and most important information about those three is that they take a long time to recover. For example, it will take me half a year if I do nothing but take it easy to recover what I am missing from my stamina. But with each million of stamina I add, the higher the threshold before it starts to take from my stamina. Right now, I could sit completely still and live a couple of years without food, but eventually I would die. Reach High enough millions, and you could fight for hundreds of years straight.”
“But wouldn’t that mean that you could just attack a particular person over and over until they exhausted themselves?” Wes asked.
Smiling Phony nodded. “That is part of what keeps our Universe in check. Even a less powerful faction can hit up in class with enough people. Health and Mana work the same way as stamina, with some key differences. With each million of Mana you gain, an efficiency bonus to your abilities, and every tenth million gives you a fraction of a fraction boost in damage. Health, however, only deals with recovery. As I said before, strength makes everyone sturdier, more resistant to damage. That, in conjunction with health, makes it significantly harder to kill someone if they have a high enough health stat.”
Phony held out a finger, “but here is the most important thing about health. It allows for a visual representation of someone's level of health. Damage shows up in four ways. If you damage someone who was at a hundred percent health, and they lose less than 25 percent of their health. No matter what damage you did, they would recover in seconds, leaving only bruising. Damage someone and keep them above 50 percent. Cuts, abrasions, and scarring show up. 25 percent and above, you can see other physical signs start to manifest. For example, they start to look like someone not on the path who is dehydrated or emaciated. Lastly, anyone between zero percent health and 25 percent begin to show signs of aging. Hair turns gray, they wrinkle, and their body starts to give out.”
Phony’s enthusiasm didn’t wane; the more she saw that she held Wes’s attention, the more excited, and the more she wanted to hold it. “But even that becomes more complicated. When two Pathers end up fighting, they try to destroy each other's limbs. The damage is multiplied with each limb taken. One limb is 1.5 times, two limbs are 2. Adding one for each limb taken. The only way of really dealing with limb damage is having a healing ability of some sort. My father has a Healing ability that is quite coveted in the universe.”
Wes nodded, remembering his time being tortured.
Having a realization, Wes asked. “But during my awakening quest. Assuming what I saw is a member of the Clans, at least one of them for sure was missing an arm. That doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t they heal their limbs?”
“You are forgetting what traits do. Traits add or take away specific things from our status. They amplify and or smother. They are called the Clans because each group's traits vary. Even I don’t know all the different flavors the Clans come in.”
Wes nodded.
“I will caution you, though, don’t start a fight you are not one hundred percent sure you can win. Even if you see someone who is showing signs of being in the last 25 percent of their health pool. They could still have millions and millions left.” Phony warned.
Nodding along, Wes asked, “Yeah, I get that. But really, you mind sharing how much you recover?”
“Not at all, all recovery scales with millions. Every million adds 1 point to the per-minute recovery. I am over four million, so I recover four per minute. 240 an hour, 5760 every day, and 2,102,400 every year. Just so you know, every time I went out this past week, I would use a little less than half a day's worth. If I pushed myself, I would burn over a day easily in a couple of hours. Many blueprints are out there for growth, and the one I follow is based on my mother’s own leveling. Stamina is important, don’t get me wrong, but of the big three, it is the one that is the least important. Which is why I have held off on committing points to it.”
Having quite a lot to ponder, Wes sat back and looked up at the sky.
“Sorry, Wesley, but you have not explained your active unique ability or your new ability yet.” Dozel reminded.
“Oh crap, my bad, I forgot.” Pulling up his status again for all three.
Name: Wesley of 29744C
Race: Human
Age: 27
Unique abilities: Imperial over Metric, Back in My Day
Abilities: Deposit, Eternal Spark, Cleanse, Stopwatch
Skills: N/A
Achievement(s): Bloody Soul, Pragmatic Savant
Trait(s): 3
Current Status: Blessed
Level 2
Savings: 2,532,409
Next Level: 1866.24
Level 2 Exp Per Sec: .0072
Current Exp: 3.967
“Damn it. I was so focused on my savings and learning more about leveling that it's not active anymore.” Wes huffed out.
“You have no idea what it does?” Dozel asked.
“Nah, I have an idea. It puts information in my head that wasn’t there. I think I just have to ask the right question.”
Both girls looked at each other in confusion before they both asked, “what?”
