Hero's Personal Log 059 Oh, fuck yeah. That feels great. Love leveling up so much. Party Chat

[Aster K'lon]: A level?

[Jerome Smith]: You can tell?

[Aster K'lon]: You reacted the same way you did last time. That, and the party system means that I can see important notifications like that.

[Jerome Smith]: Ah.

[Aster K'lon]: Now that we have cleared the dungeon, it will not be dangerous to us until we leave it. Any non-deviant Dungeon Core functions that way.

[Jerome Smith]: There are deviant Dungeon cores like that? I guess there was that corrupted one we saw earlier...

[Aster K'lon]: They can be deviant within the bounds of our System. When that happens--which is very rare around these parts, by the way--a team of adventurers is dispatched to kill the Dungeon Core.

[Jerome Smith]: But this one's not deviant, right?

[Aster K'lon]: Correct. As such, I recommend staying within the bounds of this room for the time being while you are vulnerable.

[Jerome Smith]: Wait, hold on. Can't we just kill the Dungeon Core for XP? I know you said it was bad practice, but not why.

[Aster K'lon]: As I said, that is a lecture for another day. Dungeon Cores provide too much benefit to our society to warrant their destruction.

[Jerome Smith]: Got it. I'm going to spec skills now.

[Aster K'lon]: Carry on. I will meditate to regenerate mana.

[Jerome Smith]: That's it? No suggestions?

[Aster K'lon]: You must learn to make your own decisions. I am not your mother, Jerome.

P-System Log

Aaaand she just sat down without giving a single fuck. What an incredibly based person.

Jerome didn't seem to miss a beat, though. Props to him, I guess? Although maybe he's just dense enough to not realize that was supposed to be somewhat condescending.

Hero's Personal Log 060 System, how much can I do with the level up? P-System Message You possess approximately 900 XP of skill points. Hero's Personal Log 061

Oh shit, that's way more than I expected. I can't say no to that, can I?

Alright. Is there a way I can view the XP values for my skills right now?

P-System Message

[Magic Missile lv. 4]: 1/180

[Assess lv. 2]: 6/200

[Blazing Spear lv. 4]: 0/320

[Misty Strike lv. 1]: 0/400

Hero's Personal Log 062

Thanks.

Okay, so I've got four skills and a bunch of XP to invest into them. I think the price has been increasing by each time, so I'm not totally sure how many levels I'll be increasing them by if I invest all 900. Obviously, I won't be doing that. I gotta think on how to optimize.

Wait, quick question. Could I spend some of that XP to learn a new skill instead of leveling another one up?

P-System Log Hm. That's actually a good question. I don't know how to pick up new skills apart from basing it off of a skill that Aster or an enemy uses, but I know I'm definitely capable of doing it. At the same time, I don't actually know how much W Inertia it costs to create a skill. I don't recall [Assess] or [Blazing Spear] costing any W Inertia to form, but maybe I misremembered? [Misty Strike] cost a whole hundred W Inertia to form, and shit has been changing on the fly. I think I'll assume new skills require W Inertia. If they don't, I think it'll actually be better for me. I can just say I expended a bunch of XP and then store it for myself. P-System Message Acquiring a new skill requires a varying amount of XP (minimum quantity: 100). Acquiring a new skill requires experiencing another Integrated using a similar skill. Hero's Personal Log 063

Hmmm... okay. That's fine. I think I won't look for a new skill right now then. Aster's regenerating her mana right now--which I need to learn, by the way--so I'm not gonna bother her. Gotta respect the mana grind.

In that case, what should I upgrade? Let's see...

Aster told me that skills evolve. I don't know when they evolve, but I can guess it'll be at an important milestone like level 10 or 50. Apparently, [Magic Missile]'s evolutions kind of suck, so even though it was my most efficient attacking spell, I think I'm gonna hold off on giving it more XP.

As for [Assess], I don't think I saw a single difference between level 1 and 2. Maybe it's something on the backend that I don't have access to, but I literally haven't seen a thing. Besides, the System's handling extra stats for me, so I think I can skimp out on it for now.

That leaves two spells. [Blazing Spear] at level 4 and [Misty Strike] at level 1. The first one has been pretty meh so far. Its primary usage has been AoE, which I guess it's pretty effective at. Just for that alone, I think it's worth putting some XP into. I always used to be a fan of utilizing underwhelming skills in powerful ways. I think it's worth a shot bumping it up. Also, it apparently has decent potential to evolve. If it evolves into anything nearly as strong as [Misty Strike], that'll be XP well spent.

The thing is, my [Epic]-rarity skill is just so damn powerful. 15R10+10 is no joke, and it's been dealing around ninety damage minimum. That's like, triple the output of my other spells. I really want to invest into it, but I can't get too single-minded. I wanna be a diverse caster, not just a one-trick pony.

Nine hundred is a lot, though. For now, could I get enough to level up my non-[Common] skills once apiece?

P-System Log

Seems like decent reasoning. If only he could pay this much attention to literally anything besides his own stats.

Alright, here we go! 32 W Inertia into [Blazing Spear] and 40 into [Misty Strike] should be enough to level both of them.

Skill leveled up! [Blazing Spear] lv. 4 -> lv. 5 Damage increased by 2R6+1R5. Mana cost increased by 18% of base. Skill leveled up! [Misty Strike] lv. 1 -> lv. 2 Damage increased by 1R10+2. Mana cost increased by 15%. P-System Log Huh, the level 1 -> 2 for the latter skill didn't have the "of base" qualifier. It might still not have the compound interest on mana that [Magic Missile] has, since [Blazing Spear] also didn't display that the first time. Hero's Personal Log 064 Could I get the rest of them in [Misty Strike]? I wanna try to grow that skill a little faster than my others right now. P-System Log And that's another 18 gone. I did promise him, and I don't plan on reneging on what I say. I might be a hypocrite sometimes, but I'm not a liar. Even to myself. Most of the time. Heros' Personal Log 065 Also, is there any way I can increase my mana? I'm not sure when the milestones for that are. P-System Log Oh, right. I was planning on messing around with increasing mana, but I wasn't able to because just randomly trying to increase mana would be weird. Now that he's got a level up, it's a decent time to try. P-System Message Mana increase processing... P-System Log

Alright, I gotta figure this out. Earlier, I was able to increase his Health stat by just focusing on it, so I guess I can try the same for mana. Apparently, his Magic stat is somewhat tied to it, but increasing that was an exceptionally inefficient way of increasing mana. I'll just focus on the stat this time.

Oh, I'm dumb. Why didn't I do this earlier? I seriously just needed to focus on the bundle of significance that's mana flavored? That was it?

Whatever. Live and learn or something.

One W Inertia in, to test the waters.

Jerome Smith (abbreviated) Stat Current Maximum Mana 819 1043 Stat Value P-System Log

Looks like his Mana stat is more receptive to W Inertia than his Health was. That was six? I think? Six mana from a single point. Pretty solid, but it took a bit longer for it to actually settle in. I think I'll scale progression on this off of his Magic stat.

Oh, wait. I talked about milestones with him before. It was supposed to be 5s and 10s for major increases, but I also said that there would be minor increases at every level. I guess I can just do that now. I'll give him four more points of W Inertia for Mana, which should bring him to a 30 increase. Just about the same as his Magic stat.

Aaaaaand there we go.

P-System Message

Milestone level 3 reached!

Mana increased by 30!

Party Chat

[Jerome Smith]: I leveled up two skills and increased my mana.

[Aster K'lon]: Excellent. Let us leave this dungeon, then. We have no more business here. Gather the drops if you wish, and then we shall depart.

[Jerome Smith]: These are bad drops. Let's get out of here.

P-System Log Alright, we're done leveling and shit. Dungeon went pretty well, looks like there's not going to be any problems with it. Sacrifice accepted. Skill invoked: [H?? WA???F?? ?Y?] P-System Log Are you fucking kidding me.