Once more Lust was absently watching Dix stroll around and pick out weapons while her mind was working through a dilemma. As before, it was about Dix and his skills. Oddly enough, watching him absolutely destroy the second test hadn’t really surprised her. After seeing him gain things like exploding shot on his second attempt drove home to her how ludicrous his current existence was. She suspected that he would lose a great deal of skills when he got sent down to Mantra, but was uncertain as to how many, or how to help him. She had already made a few suggestions to Chance in preparation for his pre third test training with magic and mage weapons. Not that she expected Dix to need much in the way of assistance on gaining skills for the moment. And it wasn’t how fast or how many skills he had gained that was bothering her; she was well aware of how this space eased the requirements to learning new skills. By the time the second test had rolled around, she had already accepted that Dix really was functioning on a different level than anyone before.

No, what was bothering her was one skill in particular. Mana Sense. The man didn’t even have mana sight yet, but he has Mana Sense? Even this didn’t particularly worry her, she had seen him jump to other skills without the expected preliminary skills being acquired first. What bothered her was when it showed up. Along with all the other W’s that go with that. How, what, when, where, and why.

As far as she could tell, he gained Mana Sense as Chance was walking over with the valves. But while it wasn’t impossible to have gotten Mana Sense during that brief period, it was highly improbable. The normal way to get Mana Sense was to be blindfolded and stretch out with your other senses, using mana to transfer the senses and the signals. Dix hadn’t done anything but blink. Hardly the partial sensory deprivation that was normally required. The presence of some sort of high mana object also greatly helps in the development of Mana Sense, but the valves have almost no mana until they are placed on their new host.

From what she could see there was no way for him to get that skill at that point in time. Even being familiar with Dix’s ridiculously accelerated learning didn’t explain this one. With all of the things he had learned he actually had to try to do something before he learned them. So Mana Sense just spontaneously turning itself on made no sense. Completely obsessed now with figuring this out Lust went back to the beginning of the problem and watched the scene over and over again. It took her much longer than it should have to realize that the difference she was looking for was only in Dix’s head.

It was in his thoughts that she finally found the closest thing to an answer she was likely to get. Before he had the skill his mind was serene and calm. But the instant the skill appeared his mind was awhirl with emotions and thoughts. Or at least as awhirl as his mind seemed to get. The most notable emotion was irritation, but there was no build up. Normally, to get to irritation one needed to pass through another emotion like frustration, boredom, or even exhaustion. Even then, irritation is normally something that builds up, not goes from zero to sixty instantly.

She ran through the feed another dozen times before she figured it out. The skill, the irritation, the thoughts. All of them show up in the feed at the exact same instant. As though they were all linked together, but they couldn’t be. The feed shows new skills the very instant that they are achieved. A reactionary emotion takes time to activate. There is simply no way the irritation and thoughts were a result of the skill acquisition. Which means that whatever caused him to learn Mana Sense as well as get irritated took place before that instant, something that clearly didn’t happen according to the feed. The only thing that surprised Lust about it all was how long it took her to figure it out. The answer to the entire puzzle was Crossroads.

The new question distracting her was what to do about it.

While she pondered her new approach to this situation, she sent out a thought to her partners about how she had discovered Crossroads interfering. She even included the skill gain, and complete lack of knowledge of what else happened during that frozen moment. Maybe one of them would have some hope of getting an answer out of the crotchety old bastard. Lust avoided him as he seemed to be the only god or goddess completely immune to her charms, something that made her very nervous. It seemed unlikely that Chance would get an answer, but the other one, well, she was actually very close to Crossroads. She could only hope the answer she would get would actually be helpful.

In the meantime she watched Dix testing out yet more weapons. So far all he had accomplished was to acquire Shields. At the moment, he seemed to be trying to incorporate a mage weapon into his more martial weapon use. Currently he had a wand in one hand and a chain in the other. He was trying to use the chain in a variety of ways to strike, disrupt, or disable an imaginary enemy, then blasting that same enemy with the wand whenever there were imaginary openings. To Lust it looked exhausting, but probably effective. She was a little curious where the chain had come from, until it suddenly vanished only to be replaced by an oar.

She watched him attempting to use the oar and the wand at the same time, a feat that seemed beyond even Dix. She couldn’t figure out why he would be trying to do something so ludicrous. It was quite amusing to see him stumble over the oar during attacks and movement, or flat out drop the wand. At one point he actually tossed the wand straight up into the air in anger. After lashing out several times with the oar he performed some sort of spinning attack, letting the oar roll into just his outside hand. When the wand dropped into his newly freed hand to unleash a series of magical blasts, Lust was stunned. He did it all on purpose. Glancing at the skill list she saw why: Improvised Weapons.

Laughing at the idiocy of working that hard to get such a pointless skill, she looked back into the feed to see him trying to get something even more useless. What followed was a series of not quite weapons. Bar stools, chairs, table legs, beer steins, even a keg. Lust was having a great time laughing at the stumbling attempts at making use of the unimaginatively named Bar Weapons. When Beauty started glaring at her for making fun of her crush, she laughed even harder. That laughter was choked off shortly after Bar Weapons was created in his skill list, as it was immediately relegated to a subskill of Advanced Martial Weapons: Humanoid.

The thoughts in Lust’s head were going crazy. How could he possibly know about Bar weapons? Shields and Improvised I can understand, but no one tries for Bar weapons without knowing the category even exists. Did Roanoak tell him at some point and I missed it? Or is Crossroads actually helping him to this extent? Why? Why would he help someone this much? He’s been a hermit for his entire existence, so what is going on? And why now? We finally have a chance to make a difference, and he’s interfering. She glanced back at the skill list. With all of his weapon skills gathered into a single skill, he suddenly had a lot fewer skills. Not nearly enough to make a difference when he finally went down to Mantra, but progress all the same. Considering how quickly he worked his way into Shields, Improvised and Bar Weapons, and the help he had obviously been given, she wasn’t going to bet against him getting a low enough skill count to keep what he wanted.

Once more focusing on the feed she was tempted to laugh again, but knew it would come out closer to the cackle of a mad woman. The lunatic was back to practicing with the mage weapons, only this time he was blasting himself in the leg with every magical attack spell he had, one element at a time. He’d even taken his pants off to do it. More resistance training? I didn’t think he was a masochist, but I could have been wrong.

Lust was surprised when she got a message four elements later. It was from the third member of their little conspiracy, the only one that was close enough to Crossroads to even have a chance of getting an answer.

“He says, and I quote, ‘Tell Lust to mind her own damn business.’ Sorry. On the other hand he did tell me a bit about what he is up to, provided he didn’t lie. Apparently he had a little chat with Dix about races, and was making sure that Chance didn’t accidentally mess up any of the abilities he might get by giving him the wrong valves. The most important thing he mentioned though was something I had completely forgotten about. What do the people who died mid transfer get access to that no one else does? I know it’s been centuries since the last one, but try and remember.”

Two groans, one from Lust, the other from Chance, were broadcast into the mental communication channel. Chance just said, “Why do you have to make us figure this stuff out? Also, what do you mean ‘the wrong valves?’”

“When you figure out what he has access to, you’ll understand about the valves.”

Lust was struggling to remember. It had been so long, and even gods forget pointless things. It’s like trying to remember all of the extinct races, there’s so many, but they serve no pur-! “The Extinct Races! Oh, wow! I’ve really missed some of them. And the valves could really screw up some of those races.”

“Whoa. Yeah, glad he popped in then, that could have been bad. Wait, do we know what he chose? Did he choose? He doesn’t look any different, and still Identifies as Human.” Chance was still studying Dix as he worked his way through all the resistances he could, using the time to also learn enough to use each of the different mage weapons, attack spells, and healing spells. She would periodically wince at the amount of pain such activity should inflict, although she was obviously enjoying the view.

“All he told me was that Dix had chosen, and the valves he has in are fine. From his careful wording of that statement, I would surmise that the valves Dix has are not the original ones that Chance had. And also that he won’t tell us what race he picked. There is another thing of equal importance though. It’s not just the extinct races he gets to choose from, he gets the stats too.” Their third member always was smart. Lust was quite happy with her compatriots. None of their domains really overlapped, but they managed to be working to solve the same problem in the same way. Quite a feat for any collection of the normally fractious gods.

Lust was intrigued. The chance to see someone from one of the extinct races was rare enough, but to see the extinct stats too, it was almost too good to be true. “Do we know for sure that he took one of the extinct races? And if it’s even a useful race, no matter what he chose.”

“Judging by the huge smirk on Crossroad’s face when he mentioned it, Dix must have chosen something both impressive, and shocking. I’m actually quite looking forward to the surprise. You’ve actually met the man, Chance, do you think he would take one of the extinct races, or the stats?”

Chance giggled into the communication. “You’ve both been paying attention to the feed, so you should know as well as I do. He’s far too excited about all the new things he gets to experience to pass up a chance to try something unique. I won’t even bother to give you the odds on him not taking an extinct race, they are so low. And it’s the same for the stats. I will say that the only way he would take something other than what is on the extinct list is if it’s all crap to his view. He might be excited, but he is also extremely practical. If nothing on either of the extinct lists is useful in his eyes, he’ll pick from whatever else is available. Though, I know what’s on the list for extinct races, so it’s essentially a given he’ll pick something from there. As for the other list? I have no idea what the extinct stats are, or even how to access that information, so I can’t tell you how he’ll decide.”

The third conspirator hummed down the line before speaking again. “I only remember a couple of them, but for someone with a brain and the right skills they could be devastatingly powerful in time. The issue is that they mostly suffer from extremely low power at lower levels and need to be power leveled for quite some time before they come into their promised power. Even then, without the right skills and classes it can all fall apart. There is a reason there were so few people left with these stats before they were wiped out.”

“I snuck a look at them a few decades back,” Lust admitted. “It was quite easy really. Enjoyable too.” The tone in which she reminisced about her intrusion left no doubt in the mind of the others that Lust had seduced her way into the opportunity. “I never thought it would end up being useful, but I always was the curious one. Some of the stats are powerful, but mostly come with so many restrictions and conditions that they are basically useless without someone powerful and experienced to guide, and equip the user. If he’s going to use one of the extinct stats the best options are most likely the ones that even I didn’t understand. Some of them are couched in language so esoteric that they are almost incomprehensible. I don’t know if any of these are actually useful, but if we can figure them out together once they are unlocked they might be the best bet we have. The few others that don’t fit in either category aren’t any better than the stuff that is still out there, perhaps even slightly worse.

“However, even the most powerful stats need to be a good match with the person using them. Has Dix even settled on a role yet? From what I have seen, he’s all over the place. Obviously he is extremely talented in ranged and tactical combat, but he also didn’t have any skills, or knowledge about them, during the melee test. As for this one,” Lust glanced at the feed again, only to see Dix throwing spells at a series of summoned elementals, “I honestly have no idea what he’s up to.”

Chance answered before anyone else could. “Right now he’s testing his spells in every way he can think of. He seemed to be leaning into Conjure Weapon pretty hard for a while, but I can’t tell if that is his intent for the future, or just to get his last few weapon skills. For right now, there isn’t much we can do. We won’t know enough about the extinct stats to actually help him choose amongst them until he’s done, we win the Bid, and we can all see them together. Until then, there’s no point in arguing. But feel free to tell us more about the extinct stats, I need some entertainment now that he put his pants back on.”

The extinct stats were a little different from the extinct races. For one there were a lot less of them. But by this point in time there were actually more extinct systems than living. Inheritance was funny with stats. The other important thing is that all of the statistical systems had been made, not born or evolved like people.

Legends state that when new races of people were first introduced to Mantra long ago, they got to create their own statistical systems. It was mostly a way to help ease the transition, and give people a way to track the growth of their strengths. Eventually there were enough stat systems that it covered most desires, so they stopped making new ones. Some of the systems were never very popular with other people though. There were ones that focused on the wrong stats for other types of beings, or were too unbalanced to truly be useful. Others were simply too convoluted for most people to understand. No matter the reason, if there was no one alive with a particular stat system then it was listed as extinct.

Some of the extinct statistical systems were absolute garbage for anyone, but there were a few gems. Several of the systems that were now extinct had been used by incredibly powerful people. People who had often been hunted down and exterminated because they grew too powerful too quickly. Entire families had been wiped from existence to prevent more people from maintaining these systems and to keep the peace. A few of the systems wielded by people of this level of power had actually been removed from the system entirely by the gods.

Perhaps more importantly, there were also a few systems that were almost completely unknown. These mostly untouched systems had each only had a single user that was likely killed in an unlucky accident, or an encounter with monsters far above their level. The details had not been recorded for each of the failures, but the fact remains that these statistical systems never truly got a chance to show what they could do.