I retired to my room soon after dinner, promising Brianne and Henry I would make myself available in the morning. Cedric took his role as Squire and Vassal serious, and not only escorted them out, but double-checked that the door was barred, and searched all rooms for intruders.

Gaining permission to use the office, he used the communication array and security protocols to contact his family and inform them of his promotion and his new position.

It was time to get a handle on the *pending* status for my rank and find out what Caraid meant about how experience worked.

“Status,” I thought, giving a mental command to System and opening my character sheet.

Name:

Mac De Beleros

Prince:

Level 1 (Pending)

Title:

Summerland’s Protector

Title:

Zeus’ Bane

Danu’s Kiss: You have been blessed by Wild Magic and the Goddess Danu.

The wee folk, sprites, and earth elementals will obey your commands.

You can call upon the Wild Magic to enhance any spell cast once every third day.

Sithern’s created by you will conform and move to your will after creation.

Health Pool

2400

Magic Strength

3600

Strength

12

Agility

12

Intellect

18

Will Power

18

Affinities:

Earth Affinity

15%

Air Affinity

32%

Water Affinity

15%

Fire Affinity

85%

Nature Affinity

70%

Death Affinity

15%

Mind

55%

Skill:

One-Handed Sword

Master Rank

Two-Handed Sword

Journeyman Rank

Dagger

Journeyman Rank

Medium Shield

Master Rank

Armor

Master Rank

Perception

Expert Rank

Command Presence

Expert Rank

Beleros Aura:

An ability associated with those whose lineage and bloodline trace back to the God Beleros, allows the user to create a fiery aura that protects the individual, heals damage, and inflicts burning effect damage to enemies. True sight is active within Aura radius, dispels all illusions.

Spells:

Nature’s Blessing: Allows the individual to commune with and claim lands and bind with the land’s spirit: warning the binding process works both ways. The individual is claimed by the land as much as the land is claimed by the individual.

Fire

Fire Blast (Level 1)

Fire

Absorb Shield (Level 2)

Fire + Air (New)

Fireball (Level 3)

Nature

Heal Self (Level 1)

Nature

Heal Other (Level 2)

Air

Wind Blast (Level 2)

Air

GaleForce (Level 1)

Air + Fire

Light Globe (Level 1)

Portal

Summerland (Personal Lands)

Portal

Talahm

Faction:

Seelie

+2000 (Liked)

Unseelie

+2000 (Liked)

Olympian

-1000 (Not Trusted)

Asgardian

-1000 (Not Trusted)

“Caraid, the pending notification on my rank? How do I remove that?”

[Skills, spells, and aura’s increase in level automatically as you use them,] Caraid explained.

[Your body is creating pathways. Integrating the muscle memory or broadening mental nuances that allow the system to report your progression in real-time, as they happen. Because of this, they are able to advance without any extra effort on your part.]

[You’ve already put in the effort and training by using them.]

[Ranks and levels are something else. Something completely different.]

[Increasing Rank and level require you to use the experience you’ve gained and stored.]

[ Questing, fighting, crafting, there are many ways to gain experience. But that experience, once accumulated, is only stored potential. You should think of experience points like your body’s fat deposits. It permeates your body and magic channels, swelling cells and stimulating enzymes. They allow DNA and RNA to experience an augmented and accelerated replication sequence.]

[These experience pockets exist until you subsume them. Although each cell contains the potential to replicate and mutate, you must deliberately guide that potential, make thoughtful decisions on how to advance and what status characteristics you would stimulate.]

[By converting that stored experience, you transform the potential to the actual.]

[Every Level, each Rank the process remains the same. You collect and store experience until you hit a plateau. A bottleneck where you need to level up. The System notifies you of this plateau by adding a pending notification to your status sheet.]

“How do I convert the potential experience then?” I asked.

[Meditation,] Caraid answered succinctly.

[Looking inwards and examining yourself and your spiritual body until you can identify the potential that hasn’t been integrated and made a part of the whole. Once you’ve identified what doesn’t belong, you can begin cycling and directing that potential, subsuming what is possible and expanding what is real.]

[The System has calculated how much experience will be required for you to add an assigned number of stats points.]

[Peons and Commoners gain one point that can be assigned to ‘build’ their profile.]

[Squire and Knights gain two points.]

[Lord and Duke gain three points.]

[Prince gain four points.]

[Ranked Kings and Queens gain five points.]

[And Demi-Gods gain six points.]

[It is unclear if the Gods have the ability to level up once transcendence has occurred.]

[Liken experience gains to a towel.]

[When you dip a towel in a pool of water, the towel works as a wick and slowly absorbs the water until the saturation point is reached. This new energy expands your body's potential and prepares it. The process is an evolution in the matrix of magic and mortal that can be quantified and listed on a status screen. As part of the process, it creates a foundation to accept another round of experience to store and use to level.]

“Can enough experience be stored to gain multiple levels at once?” I asked.

[Yes and no. There are rare quests or kills that might gain an individual enough experience to receive multiple levels. But the experience if not used immediately at level-cap begins to deteriorate.]

[The stored potential is similar to radioactive isotypes. The cell lining of the wall acts like lead shields. But too much energy cannot be contained indefinitely, and the isotopes of potential begin to leak out until equilibrium is restored.]

[The higher the overdraft of experience to level, the faster the cells work to restore homeostasis.]

“Then just meditate? Look for the difference?”

[Yes.]

[Except remember you received a gift from S-Prime. That ring of Hidden Depths you’ve been using as a glorified bag of holding also contains a training room.]

[If you extend your spirit and magic into the ring, you will meet with a trainer that can expand and improve on your abilities. He’ll be able to lead you through a guided meditation and cultivation cycle that suits you perfectly.]

“Cultivation?

“Does harnessing experience rely on Qi, cultivation, and inner energy?”

[Not really, but the concepts are similar.]

[You don’t have to worry about meridians or a dantian. There is no profound or secret cultivation technique that gives you access to an inner world of spiritual energy.]

[Don’t get hung up on semantics. Cultivation… Merging… Expanding… None of these words really encapsulate or explain the process.]

[Consider it more a biological imperative.]

[Your DNA will absorb the potential and your mitochondria will allow the S phase of cell division to explode exponentially, dividing furiously creating new and stronger cells as enzymes are produced and adapted to make use of the potential energy.]

[A qualitative and quantitative change occurs on the molecular level. Harnessing experience to re-write your body's DNA. Errors in decoding and reproducing are eliminated and the magic directs the experience energy to increase your potential.]

"Sidhe know about DNA?"

[Of course,] Caraid said, [the best healers are able to operate on the cellular level when repairing the body.]

[As you level, your body and abilities become stronger, better, and capable of absorbing more experience to repeat the process, each new cell creating and establishing a new foundation to build the next level upon.]

[It’s cyclical. But can be directed. You can make a choice to funnel this stored energy into any of your stats, at whatever ratio you’d like.]

[Once begun, the process continues until the stored experience is expended and you and your body have adapted]

“I wonder why the process isn’t automatic?” I asked.

[No one knows for sure. Researchers have hypothesized that the reason experience may be stored until the individual decides to increase level may be due to the mechanics involved. Cells, DNA, Mitochondria are forced to divide, reproduce, and evolve at exponential rates. Your body is being torn apart and rebuilt every time you level up.]

[Can you imagine that happening in the middle of a battle?]

"It would be distracting." I agreed.

[Although there is no certainty behind this belief, most think the System holds that potential in abeyance placing the energy into storage until you are capable of making a conscious decision to convert it.]

"If it makes your body better and stronger, why don't status points increase? Shouldn't I be stronger, faster, and smarter after I level up?"

"You are stronger, faster, and smarter after you level up. Your Prince Rank 2 strength of 12 is about a tenth more strength than your Prince Rank 1 strength of 12. And that’s assuming you don’t invest any additional points into the stat. The status numbers change by .1 every level gain in addition to those points you assign. This is done regardless of Rank or level."

"Thanks, Caraid," I said after he answered the last of my immediate questions. "My status numbers and the way they increased was bothersome. I’d thought I wouldn’t be able to direct growth and that the .1 gain to every stat per level was the extent to changes."

Time and tide wait for no man may have been a cliché, but that didn't make it any less true.

Time to stop stalling, bite the bullet, and level up.

Taking the time to undress and lay down, I tried to get as comfortable as possible before I sent my mind outwards. Channeling my mental energies and magic into the ring. The translocation was strangely familiar, similar to the Portal crossing I’d experienced returning from the Summerlands.

One moment lying in bed, the next floating in the vastness of space.

A Void of infinite black.

Silent.

Peaceful.

It should have scared me. This look into the abyss. And if I hadn’t met S-Prime, it might have been traumatic. Instead, it was soothing. An island of peace and isolation in a storm of uncertainty and chaos.

That moment of perfection couldn't last. The absence of light and sound was eventually broken as a pinpoint of light slowly formed and grew. Seconds. Moments. Years. There was no way of gauging the passage of time. But slowly, it seemed, ever so slowly that light approached until it blazed before me majestically.

[Greetings, Mac de Beleros. You have shared blood and semen and gained entrance to this place. You have become a part of this domain.]

[How can I be of service?]

“Who are you?” I asked in wonder.

[We are a construct. An amalgam and collection of hopes and dreams.]

[Teacher. Sage. Guide.]

[We are the embodiment and representative of the potential the Sidhe possess.]

[Not perfect. Never perfect.]

[Perfection is an ideal to be sought, never realized. But we contain the bits of wisdom and insights that have allowed the Sidhe to prosper.]

[All the Sidhe. Past and present.]

“You can guide my meditation, help me embrace and actualize the stored potential so that I can level up efficiently?” I asked.

[That and so much more.]

[We can create sparring golems that will battle with you increasing incrementally your fighting ability as you become more proficient.]

[Guide your magic abilities to become surer, more adept.]

[We can show you how to increase your proficiencies in any skills, spells, or auras you possess.]

[And we can help you form and devise new spells based on your ideas safely.]

Our role is limited in scope, we are able to assist. But you must guide.]

[You decide how you would make use of us.]

[You set parameters and targets and goals you wish to strive for.]

[We cannot initiate action. We respond to your will. Your ideas.]

If this were really an MMORPG, they would consider this ring game-breaking. A cheat to exploit the system. Really, the potential advantages were monumental.

Sad really, that all I wanted at the moment was to level up.

“I have reached the peak of my current rank, and I need to level up. Can you help me devise a meditation protocol that will allow me to absorb the potential experience my body has stored and convert it into actual results, as efficiently as possible?”

[Yes.]

[If you are ready?]

“Yes,” I agreed.

The light that had grown to fill the vastness of space began to shrink, dimming until only a small flickering flame remained. The flame quickly changed position until it was an arm's length away and at eye level.

[Observe the flame.]

[Don’t focus on it, allow your vision to relax, recognizing the flame as it moves.]

[Notice the oranges and reds.]

[Project your mental energies towards the flame acting and reacting in a synergistic dance. Neither leading nor following. A harmonic blend. You and the flame merge, potential and actuality become one.]

As I listened to the words, my body began to vibrate.

Frequencies of sound and light merging.

Harmony in motion.

A dance of particles and energies.

My awareness and the flame, a collective of shared energy and expectations.

Just as flames need oxygen and fuel to burn, so too was my body's requirements a chemical reaction. That stored experience. The potential energy became the energy that fueled the flame. Burning steadily as my body converted what I had stored into something new.

Caraid was right. I was re-born. My body was torn apart as experience rewired and rewrote my DNA, encompassing and absorbing that potential. Making it a part of me. Forging my body in the flames of what could be and smelting and hammering that potential into something better.

[Now decide. Direct how you would assign that experience.]

My body knew what he meant, and how to accede to his directive. I’d already considered where I should assign my status points.

Events have demonstrated that I needed to be able to dodge and cast powerful magics. So, it made sense to add points to agility and intelligence.

Caraid was correct, my body knew how this was done, the same way it knew how to breathe. It was an intrinsic part of who I was. And the process was almost as automatic as breathing.

[LEVEL UP]

[You have reached Prince Rank 2]

Name:

Mac De Beleros

Prince:

Level 2

Title:

Summerland’s Protector

Title:

Zeus’ Bane

Health Pool:

2640

Magic Strength:

3840

Strength:

12.2

Agility:

14.2

Intellect:

20.2

Will Power:

18.2

The intrusion of status screens and system notifications was jarring. It shocked me out of my meditation and expelled me from the training space.

Blinking my eyes in confusion, my vision darted frantically trying to understand where I was and what had happened.