Chapter 70: Book 1: Chapter 25 (Part 3 of 4)

“Thanks, Dean. That is really good advice,” I told him genuinely 

Dean looked inordinately elated at my thanks.

“Yes, well those buying the Prime marker normally know what they are letting themselves in for and it’s not cheap to secure either. But those willing to sell on can make some serious coin, so don’t rush to put all your eggs in the eventual-freedom basket,” Dean remarked. “Quixbix told you how long it usually takes to build a Capital level building in the first place, right?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “Years, maybe a decade, he said.”

“That’s right and even then, it is almost always the Shield Generator built first, what with all the monster attacks. After that, the regular Market or the Fortress is typically next. Normally we are talking fifteen or more years for these two Prime markers to be claimed on each world unless there are some outside arrivals post Plexus connection.”

“Which is happening in six months, you said,” Shana pointed out and Dean nodded. “You also said this feature to deal in illicit goods doesn’t become available until then, correct?” Dean nodded again. “Then how would Earth people be able to sell to podiums if these markets weren’t expected to be built for fifteen years,” she pressed with her eyes narrowed.

Shana was as sharp as the arrows in her quiver.

“The markets exist elsewhere,” Dean explained. “Another world’s Prime market would be used to grant the people of Earth the function.”

Anastasia had been bobbing on her bean bag impatiently for a while trying to get a question in edgewise. “You can collar monsters?” she asked as soon as he finished his explanation, referring to something Dean had mentioned earlier that I hadn’t thought about with other revelations. “I thought that was only for people?”

“No, you can put a collar on anything if you subdue or trick it and the collar is strong enough for its tier,” Dean answered. “Contracted servitude and Convictions are for characters only.”

“This might not be so bad then,” Anastasia remarked brightly. “We need to feed my dungeon something to grow, right? Monsters aren’t as nourishing as people but if this provides a steady stream of them…”

Anastasia was correct; we would need to feed the dungeon something and monsters rather than people would certainly be my preference. Well, people who don’t have it coming at any rate.

Dean clapped his hands suddenly and rubbed them together. “There is always a bright side,” he declared loudly. “Anyway, your imp can give you a more detailed rundown on how it all works and what your options are later. Shall we get on with what we are really here for. Time to level up.”

I couldn’t help but smile along with infectious enthusiasm, even if it was a bit of a smokescreen.

“So, is there anything we should know? Drawbacks we are unaware of?” I started with.

Dean leaned back on his bean bag with a thoughtful ponder. “For you, not a fucking lot really. You can advance to level three, and you need to pick a skill for your first-tier benefit. Anastasia as well, but you guys are locked on your progression.”

“As for the lovely Shana, I’ve learned my lesson from before and will offer only advice and let you make the decisions,” he finished and held his hand aloft in submission.

“I appreciate that Dean,” Shana thanked him.

Dean produced and handed each of us a tablet to review our options.

“Shana,” Dean began. “My advice changes depending on what you want to do. You have the upgrade points to jump to another Q-Grade class if you wish. In which case you should do that before you level.”

“No, Dean,” Shana interrupted him. “I don’t want to change. I may not like how you arranged it, but I like this class.”

“Cool,” he replied. “My advice then is to level up to nine, but in the future stop at ten. At least, until you have the class upgrade points to secure the L-Grade Shadepath Sniper class.”

“Why stop at ten?” I asked.

“After level ten the amount of unspent experience you can hold onto before you level up is restricted to the equivalent of two levels of your current class. You won’t lose it, but you will be forced to level,” Dean explained. “As levelling becomes slower or more dangerous the higher you go it’s a fairly common tactic for people hoping to upgrade before they rack up too many levels at the lower graded class.”

There were three nods of understanding from our group.

“Now the advantage of taking Shadepath Sniper and staying on the same progression path is that it has the same T1 and T2 abilities, so it incorporates your earlier levels when calculating when those tier abilities increase in strength. T1 goes up every three levels, T2 every six, T3 every eight, T4 every ten, T5 every fourteen and T6 every eighteen and it goes on like that.”

“Multi-classers have to start the count over when they switch because the abilities are not shared between classes. They can get a wide array of different abilities that way, but their capacity to advance them to their full potential is severely hampered. Multi-classing has its place, but if you have the stones to push through the tiers a focused approach is much more rewarding.”

“How many upgrade points will it cost to get the Shadepath Sniper class?” Shana inquired.

“At the moment, thirty,” Dean replied. “But it is a Notorious class, so if the bossman stops pussying about and builds his Notoriety score that can be reduced.”

I’d talked this over with Quixbix. After two hundred my notoriety began to affect the number of upgrade points required. Paths and harmonisation were covered first with up to twenty percent reductions for three hundred and four hundred notoriety respectively. After that, it was for class changes hitting the twenty percent reduction at five hundred. Species brought up the rear. These could go down even further as you accumulated more notoriety but that was a long way off. 

“Thank you, Dean,” Shana said. “I will look at my options, but I really do like using my bow and think I will stay on this path.”

 With that, we all spent several minutes going over the information on the tablets Dean gave us.

Mine had a list of different skill enhancements that I could pick for my belated T1 ability which had been suppressed at level one in favour of my T4 ability to bond a dungeon core to power my ship. The extensive list was based on what was available to a Dungeon Corsair and some extra choices from the Soulbinder Path and Frost Harmonisation.

There were some interesting options available.

Dual-Wielding went onto my shortlist. Sure, I may have used two scimitars initially because I didn’t have a shield, but I’d grown quite fond of wielding both and I did have the Shattered Gauntlets which covered the whole of my arms with their Very High damage mitigation.

There were a lot of other combat skills and even some intriguing leadership ones like Inspirational Speech Making.

But what really caught my eye was something called Preternatural Insight. Drilling down into the data I learned that due to the synergising of the various senses that came as part of my build, having an imp, and my atypical experiences with the Framework, this skill which is locked for almost all beings, had been unlocked for me.

In fact, I already had natural one in it instead of zero.

The skill wasn’t a genuine sixth sense or anything, but it could increase the feedback on information I received from the Framework that was all around us, and as Quixbix explained by the beech tree I tried in vain to cut down, the Framework had quantified everything.

Dual-wielding would be more immediately useful, and this skill was more esoteric in nature, but I felt a powerful pull in my psyche. This was something almost everybody else was denied and there had to be a reason for that.

I performed a quick check, and it wasn’t the only locked skill that existed, but there were very few of them. Sure, there were a bunch of others that had prerequisites that needed to be met to make them usable, but they weren’t locked. Anybody could learn them, they just wouldn’t be helpful without the prerequisite ability, class, or knowledge.

I made it my selection and handed back the tablet to Dean. Anastasia and Shana had also finished, and Dean took a quick look at our choices.

“Hmmm,” Dean mused as he had read through Anastasia’s tablet. “Golemic Communication, an interesting choice. You are aware that you don’t need this to issue them orders.”

“Yes, but golems aren’t literate and can’t talk…” Anastasia clarified “…this will help me interpret their gestures, kind of like a secret sign language. I’ve been thinking we might be able to create small golems and send them out as spies. They wouldn’t be of much use if we couldn’t understand them when they returned.”

Dean glanced at me, and I nodded my confirmation.

“And for you my main motherfucker, you have gone for…” Dean trailed off as he read my tablet.

“Is there a problem, Dean?” I asked with a hint of concern.

He scratched the back of his head and smiled confidently. “Absolutely not, dude.”

His smile was too big, his answer came too quickly.

“Dean…What is it? You said you were going to be straight with me,” I pressed.

Dean snorted with derision. “I don’t remember promising that.”

“It was implied as part of your apology for fucking with us before,” I growled.

“Okay,” he sighed. “Tell me what skill you picked?”

“Preternatural Insight,” I answered immediately.

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Dean’s response was unexpected, his happy demeanour soured straight away, and he forcibly threw the tablet across the room, where it smashed into the Pac-Man arcade game, breaking them both.

“Fucking Ashli!” he snarled under his breath.

“Dean,” Shana spoke to him softly. “What has got you so upset about Preternatural Insight?”

“See, that’s the thing,” he grumbled and stood up and started pacing around the room. “You understood what Torin said, but I fucking didn’t. Just like I couldn’t read what was on the fucking tablet,” he ranted as part of his pacing. “You understood as well as well, didn’t you, Ana?”

“I did,” she confirmed.

“Fucking Ashli, and his fucking blind spots,” Dean yelled and stamped his feet in a very petulant display.

“Dean, perhaps you’d best explain what you mean by a blind spot,” I said and got up and guided the small, agitated man back to the bean bags.

“There isn’t much to explain,” he said, once he slumped back down. “We figured out after a few thousand years that our programmer, Ashli the ever-fucking-incompetent, wrote some blind spots into our code. We don’t know if it was deliberate or just his general ineptitude but there are a handful of things in the Framework we simply can’t see, hear, or comprehend. This skill must be one of them. I can’t tell you whether taking that skill is a good idea or not.”

I won’t lie that was concerning and had me seriously reconsidering my choice.

“And the worst thing is you probably won’t believe me. You’ll put it down to me fucking with you again,” Dean groaned with evident self-pity.

I hadn’t thought of that straight away, but now that he mentioned it, I was. Dean wasn’t making this easy.

Anastasia chuckled at his piteous display. “That last part is kind of on you isn’t it.”

Dean stuck his tongue out at her childishly. “Shana is my favourite, you know.”

“Whatever,” the small blonde said dismissively.

I let them bicker for a while longer as I thought over my decision.

Anastasia demanded to know who Ashli was and I nodded to Dean to go ahead and explain. He covered that, the Aperture, who the creators were, and how I’d been mistaken for one of them, which saved me an explanation I had promised the girls.

Which left me to contemplate the Preternatural Insight skill. The safest play would be to reverse course and take the Dual Wielding skill or maybe just the Long Blade skill in general. But the more I thought about the skill itself and what it allowed me to do, the more convinced I became that Ashli hadn’t made a mistake hiding it from the Framework administrators.

For some reason, he didn’t want his creations to be aware this skill existed. Why? I didn’t know the answer to that, but maybe, just maybe, Ashli’s mistake had been leaving the skill visible to people on their character sheets. Perhaps it wasn’t just the Framework programs who weren’t supposed to know about its existence.

On a hunch, I re-checked my sheet.

Sure enough, my natural Preternatural Insight skill level had risen to two as I pondered my choice and Ashli’s potential intent. That raise sealed the deal for me. Nobody was supposed to know about this skill, and even if they somehow unlocked it, they weren’t supposed to know they had.

I had to have it now.

“I’m taking it,” I announced to the room.

“Are you sure?” Dean asked.

“Positive,” I said back firmly.

“Okay, here are your updated details,” Dean sighed, and wafted his hand to display my character sheet large on a blank space on the wall.

 

Name: Torin Carter

Species: Frostbinder Acheronian (Tier 3.1.1)

Level: 3

Class: Dungeon Corsair Captain (K-grade Notorious) 68,000 XP

Physical: +20% Social: +30%

Strength: 9 (base 8)

Constitution: 15 (base 13)

Speed: 14 (base 12)

Agility: 8 (base 7)

Mana Capacity (+10%): 14.3 (base 13)

Perception: 8

Willpower: 15

Mental Resistance: 10

Empathy: 10 (base 8)

Charisma: 11 (base 9)

Dominance: 35 (base 27)

Leadership: 18 (base 14)

Hit Points: 760

Health: 20

Mana Pool: 165

Unused XP: 28,500

Notoriety: 148 (Current XP multiplier is 1.48)

T1: Skill: Preternatural Insight +3

T2: Unlocked at level 6

T3: Unlocked at level 8

T4: Claim a Dungeon Core 1: One Core claimed (max 1)

Armour Penalty Offset: -1

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