With the latest of swarms defeat, Peter goes back into lecture mode. There wasn’t much to go over for Courtney except a few mentions of when she could have distracted the swarm better. Rosha also did her job for the most part. When it comes to Jason though, Peter has a good bit to say.

“You keep pulling out new tricks. You’re like a small pond which actually keeps going deeper and deeper. That isn’t necessarily bad, but it isn’t good either. Presumably your skills have been growing?”

Jason pulls up his combat skill real quick. His cultivation skill, Energetic Body Reinforcement, has gone from up by two levels and 37.5% so it now sits at Apprentice level 3 and 37.5%. Desolate Traversal has only gone up 80.01% and is now Apprentice level 8 and 80.31%. The new skill to the list, War Stomp, has grown quickly already having ranked up to Initiate and on top of that gained a level and 17.3% since he last checked. The winner though is Blast Punch, which has gotten three levels and 31.6% putting it at Initiate level 4 and 31.6%.

Now not all of this is from the swarms as Jason hasn’t checked the skill levels in a while but still impressive. He doesn’t even have to speak up though as Peter just sighs. “You don’t have to say anything. Just by the look on your face, I can tell you gained at least a level in all your combat skills. Going by how good you are I also have to assume these aren’t Novice skills either.”

“I counted you using either three or four skills depending on if that was two different stop skills or just one. Seeing as you didn’t just go for another punch skill though I will assume your got lucky again and that is just one skill. You also have that body based passive skill which gives you the tough skins. Probably does more so lets say four skills? And no, I don’t want to know if I am right or not. The bottom line though is you’re lacking. I don’t want you to have 20 different skills but rather just eight to ten combat focused ones if you’re going to keep adventuring.”

Jason looks at Courtney and Rosha, then back to Peter. “I don’t think they have quite that many skills? Why should I specifically have so many instead of focusing on improving what I have?”

Peter laughs, “Oh, they have quite a few skills for combat. Though admittedly magic skews things. Courtney’s illusion magic would count as three to four skills because of how versatile it is. Rosha on the other hand just hasn’t had much of a chance to use her various skills. Remember, her weapon is like four or more different things in one. She should have a combat skill specific to each form. Plus a couple bow based tricks because those are easy enough to learn.”

“Once she gets set up with a selection of weapons Rosha will really be able to take advantage of her abilities. About the only thing she has that might go to waste is if there is a specific skill for a bladed staff. While those are splendid weapons my advice on that is just get a wood staff. Important as there isn’t much blunt damage available in the other forms and you don’t really want to be lugging around two staves.”

“Plus that’s just more gear you would have to upgrade. Yesterday this would be the point that I’d ask what all you have to upgrade, but let’s just skip that question. You do you and I keep my sanity. What I really want to talk about is the rabbit. Not much technique, though she is clearly copying you. Decent agility, going to guess around 40 points in it, though the rest of the main stats likely haven’t hit twenty.”

“All around a decent stat line for a rabbit barely into her second break. I have no clue why she is so small. Though this might be getting repetitive I also don’t want to know. The real question is what happens to the extra experience she gets that can’t go into leveling? More to the point, I know what happens, but do you?”

Jason shrugs, “Experience isn’t set to transfer if she is equal or greater level to me.”

Peter nods, “A decent setup, but that misses one key point. She isn’t a pet. When she fights, she gets experience for it yet is unable to actually gain any progress towards the next level. Technically, some of it will sit in a pool, stored till she can gain a level. Anything past gaining the next level however has to go somewhere. That place is her stats. With how slow you level this will be a great boon for you as you don’t have to hold yourself back.”

“Some monster tamers will actually hold back on leveling as long as possible to get the max amount of stats for their charges. They set the transfer to be 100% at the pets and grind. Some of the longer-lived races have the scariest monsters. Taking my own race, the elves. We have literal behemoths that were raised from birth by promising tamers. Depending on the specific monster’s threshold for stat growth, they can have four to five times the stat points of a wild one.”

“These are creatures that grow to the final bottleneck naturally. Beings who age can be uncountable and that consider most other beings on the planet as mere annoyances. Even the short-lived people like the goblins will have some sort of monstrosity to back them up. Higher levels do allow for a longer life so they might not have quite maxed out their pets growth, but they get close enough. The aquatic races in particular have some horrifying things under their control. Though it doesn’t hurt that in the water things can grow much bigger.”