4.20

“And so, the Princess saw the great suffering of her peasants and farmers, and did nothing. Then came the ledgers for this month’s tax collection. And so she declared war on the Plague Dragon.” - Excerpt from ‘The First Princess’

While I didn’t understand the exact mechanics of Traveller death, there were some certainties.

One, a Traveller will die if their body is compromised and damaged beyond what was capable of keeping stable operations. However, the exact time when the body begins to disintegrate is unknown, some begin at the moment of death, others way before that. There are likely factors I am not yet aware of playing into it.

Two, while a Traveller’s body disappears upon death, certain conditions can be met to ensure it remains in the world.

Conditions which I am hopefully fulfilling.

For this, there are three notable instances of Traveller death that I have observed.

First was the PK I was a part of, with that gnome… Valhouse was it? Anyways, that one resulted in nothing of the dead players remaining.

Second was one of Matt’s deaths, the one in which he lost a magic item he got from the tutorial. A whistle that greatly increased speed if I remembered correctly.

Third was my own death, in which my corpse was left behind after being infested by maggots.

Originally I assumed Traveller’s worked similar to classic MMORPG’s, where upon death there was a random chance of an item dropping and Noam through sheer number of deaths managed to hit one where he lost an item. That would also explain why we didn’t get any drops when we first PK’d other players. If a random drop probability existed then it was often tuned down to cater to those more casual or had some conditions, such as a bounty system. We simply weren’t lucky or didn’t fulfil the conditions.

But that explanation strained to explain why my body remained after I was killed by maggots. For one, did the system consider a corpse an ‘Item’? It was plausible, a corpse could be counted as a type of material to be used in crafting. My race of myconid was also considered innately magical which flagged it as a potential crafting material for magical items. If you could make a weapon from the bones of a mob, couldn’t you do the same with a person?

Or did I unwittingly fulfil the conditions in which a Traveller’s corpse remained regardless of death?

It was an uncertainty, but the most notable thing that occurred that differentiated my death and Matt’s was that my body was in the midst of being infested. He dropped an item while I dropped a body.

There were alternative explanations, both of us PK’d previously, so there may have been a bounty based drop table implemented, that would also explain why the first party didn’t drop anything, assuming they were clean.

However, the purpose of a bounty system was to punish a player for PKing. My body was regained upon respawning, and the remaining corpse was even a benefit to me. Its random floppings wouldn’t have triggered the proximity-based Sporages I planted, so it made an excellent carrier.

Thus, the only notable variable remaining was that my body was being infested at the moment of death, perhaps even post-death if the Poison Spores took its time getting to the maggots.

So, at the very least, I can assume a Traveller’s body will remain if a portion of it was ‘ingested’, or perhaps ‘possessed’. If this extended to the items carried by a Traveller, then that opened a lot of looting options.

Either way, my time was running out.

I wiped away the warm liquid trickling out of my mouth and eyes. Internal bleeding, if my iron dust hypothesis was true, then it was likely shredding up my veins with each pump of my heart. My slower heart rate and myconid biology likely held it back somewhat, but time took its toll.

“Utoqa.”

The lizardfolk tilted his head, around him was a dirty, grey fog that seemed to cling to his skin. Healing him took my damaged arm and both my legs. This Oasis Water solution was definitely inefficient, it didn’t translate my mass one to one to his, or perhaps a portion of my mass was being burned for energy to fuel the regeneration? Who knows. This world only follows pseudologic so the scientific method may not even work.

“Do me a favour, take the dagger on my belt.”

He did.

My vision darkened again. The room was swirling. I had long ceased glowing. Declan was muttering something, but it was far away, so far away that I could barely make it out. Did the iron finally make its way to my brain or myconid equivalent?

“When you get out of this… Find me and tell me if my body and dagger remained…”

That would hopefully prove my hypothesis.

You have died.

I awoke on the island.

“Think it paid off?”

I checked my belt, finding one of the daggers missing. “That is a good sign.”

“At the very least, a degree of conversion might’ve made it so that it wasn’t a ‘Traveller’, so it wouldn’t disappear alongside us.”

“Indeed,” I spoke, instead of thought, before looking at the scores of announcements before me.

You have levelled up!

You have unlocked Multiclassing.

You may invest your level in either Fungalmancer or Warlock (Gift of Discovery)

Note: Investing in Warlock (Gift of Discovery) will remove the [Et Non-Discent] skill

IP Summary

+10 for leveling up

+5 for witnessing the birth of a sun

+50 for obtaining a Mythic Grade Artefact [The Magician Tarot]

+100 for obtaining a Deific Grade Artefact [Left Eye of The Historian, Deity of History Writ and Recorded, the Lord of Wisdom, He Who Wars Against The Unknown, the One Who Remembers All]

+150 for helping The Historian and acting as the conduit to send Discovery to your world

+25 for rescuing the trapped mercenary group

+5 for rescuing [Tai Gnari, Sword Apprentice of the Gnari]

+20 for playing a major role in the demise of [Giatan Xienne the Priest of Life]

+15 for saving the life of [Utoqa the Tribless]

Impact Points: 398

You have unlocked the qualifications for the following Feats and may unlock them at the cost of Stat Points

Mysterious Sustenance Provider

Magician Tarot

Dimensional Gate

Keen Mind

Strategician

War Caster

Sacrifice

We both took a moment to read over the text.

“Is it too late to play as a dragon?”

No, definitely not. The amount of IP I possessed definitely placed me in the range of unlocking a dragon character, not the shit halfie that dragonborn was, but a motherfucking dragon.

We had checked over the starting dragon stat line, and those weren’t the weak fire breathing lizards that tried to pass off as dragons, but actual fucking dragons. They were humongous stat sticks with premium growth stats, up to thirty extra stat points each level, as well as powerful racials, elemental breaths, damage resistances, even immunity in some cases.

“The only caveat is that they cannot take classes and rely entirely on their innate Dragon class.”

Which, while it scaled powerfully, was unique in the way it didn’t use EXP, but time. To get a single level, dragons had to wait for years, which scaled the same way EXP did. To get from levels three to four would take decades, and five to six was centuries. This was real-world time I had to spend as the character. My real-world counterpart could very well die of old age before I even ticked level four.

“Which sucks.”

No, there were alternatives. Didn’t we get the Priest of the Discovery Shard as a class not originating from the system? Which was apparently the system classified as a Warlock class and not a Priest class.

“But we didn’t get stat points from getting it, I feel like if we invested a level into it, we would get the stat points, but it isn’t worth it.”

Yes… Indeed, the whole reason we took it was as an alternative to the exponentially scaling EXP system. If it was made into an actual ‘Level’, then it would defeat the whole purpose of it.

What other races did that leave? I swiftly opened the IP store. Magic Myconid was already an extremely good race, but the weaknesses were crippling, which was the point of a system designed to balance on itself. I had extremely good strengths while having crippling weaknesses, however, with this amount of IP I could very well get a-

“No.”

I scrolled through the dozens of listed races, only to realise something I had forgotten in my excited fervour.

Every race was balanced in some way.

Myconids had their crippling weaknesses. The elemental Genasi were weak to their opposing elements. Dragons needed time. Base humanoids like humans, elves and dwarves had their lack of innate speciality.

At best, getting a new character with a new race was just picking up another set of strengths and weaknesses.

“Not to mention another thing.”

Indeed.

My hand reached for my left eye crevice, feeling the artefact as it was melded into my very skull. I would lose Observe and Analyse. As demonstrated by my elven alt, those don’t carry over. While I could theoretically get another alt, the commitment would mean abandoning the progress I made on this character, which unless the Historian was willing to give me another eye, was not an ideal option.

“Hells, just having the fucking eye got us a hundred IP.”

It was indeed valuable, however…

“What else could we spend this IP on?”

The answer as it turned out, was nothing. Once I had determined that switching to another race wasn’t optimal, at least in the current time, there were very few things I could actually do with the IP.

I could buy a shit ton of invites and bring a lot of people here but…

“Other than Matt we don’t have a single real friend.”

So in effect. The treasure of IP I sat on was nothing more than a large number. Impressive, but ultimately useless. Honestly, I would’ve preferred I gotten paid out in Traveller’s Gold because at least I could shop at Daves.

However, the IP helped me realise another thing.

I had obtained significant amounts of IP just from saving and murdering people. Much more than in Gaia despite my longer time spent there.

These were Impact Points, a numerical measure of the effect my actions had on the world. It made sense. Saving a party of Travellers didn’t mean much if they would get back up after a few minutes.

But a person whose death meant that they stayed dead? Saving their life meant I unlocked the potential their entire natural lifespan had. Ending someone else's meant I ceased all the impact they had.

Impact that would get translated to Impact Points for me.

“The problem is we have little reason to farm Impact Points.”

Indeed. Other than buying more invites, which four hundred IP was more than enough for, we had no reason to get more IP.

Unless more options were opened up in the IP store, there was little reason for me to use it and thus, little reason to get more IP.

The number was impressive and nothing more.

Next up, were these ‘Feats’.

Mysterious Sustenance Provider (3 SP): You gain +1 to CON and gain proficiency and knowledge with the Cooking Skill.

Magician Tarot (3 SP): You select from the Tarot Spell List and learn 2 Tier 0 and 1 Tier 1 Spells of your choice. They do not take up existing spell slots.

Dimensional Gate (9 SP): You gain +3 to INT. You select from the Interweaved Dimensions Spell List and learn 2 Tier 2 and 1 Tier Conjuration Spells of your choice. They do not take up existing spell slots.

Keen Mind (3 SP): You gain a +2 to INT. You always know which way is North, the exact time before sunrise or sunset and may accurately recall anything you have seen or heard within the past month.

Strategist (3 SP): You gain a +1 to WIS and gain proficiency and knowledge with the Martial Skill. (Note, as you already have proficiency, your current proficiency will receive a minor bonus.)

War Caster (6 SP): You gain +2 to any Body or Mind stat of your choice. You can choose to remove one required spell component of your choice (Somatic, Verbal or Material) when casting a spell in exchange for a higher mana requirement. (This does not apply to Ritual Spells.)

Sacrifice (3 SP): Once per day, you may remove one instance of damage on another. An equivalent amount of damage will be inflicted upon yourself.

Yet another further level of absurd customization.

If the developers of Yggdrasil saw this, they would be desperately trying to hide it from the Design Director to ensure he doesn’t get any more weird ideas on ‘Freedom of Choice’.

Annoyingly these things cost actual stat points. Meaning I had to invest points that could’ve gone to raising my numbers. The only feats I could purchase currently were Mysterious Sustenance Provider, Keen Mind and Strategist. Keen Mind was just an assorted amount of utility effects, the usefulness of which should be rarely needed.

“Though we will be kicking ourselves if we ever need to know where North is, or the exact time to till sunrise.”

Hmm. Good point, knowing when sunrise could be really useful, though I already have a layer of coverings.

“Practically speaking Mysterious Sustenance Provider would be most useful. I’ve been meaning to learn how to cook.”

“Just do that normally idiot,” I casually retorted.

Though this gave a good reference to how much proficiency a skill was worth. Two stat points, not a large investment but also not a negligible one. Another interesting thing was that the system counts that I already had Martial proficiency.

“If that shit show could be counted as strategizing.”

Indeed, all I really did was implement net positive energy to enemy trading. It wasn’t strategy but arithmetic.

“People really need to learn the difference.”

Oh well, “no need to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

It was another option that I could take. Though realistically it was a toss-up between Magician Tarot, Dimensional Gate and War Caster.

“Sacrifice is interesting as well.”

More interesting perhaps was that this acts as a pseudo achievement system. Mysterious Sustenance Provider was likely due to me umm… serving people a hundred percent legal edibles.

“Can’t be illegal if there aren’t any laws.”

Magician Tarot was self-explanatory, Dimensional Gate I assumed had something to do with helping the Historian. I really got lucky with that one. Even now I’m getting massive dividends from it.

Keen Mind, Strategist and War Caster I assume were unlocked in the last encounter, with Sacrifice for fixing Utoqa.

“I almost always save for Gate or War Caster, correct?” I asked my other. Whether you liked having bigger numbers or more abilities depended on your own personal playstyle, but I preferred having more options on the table as opposed to being able to swing a stick better.

“Indeed.” War Caster’s ability didn’t seem much, but if I ever faced an intelligent enemy then they’re going to notice me yelling Poison Spores every so often.

Problem is to get them both I’m going to have to have to wait another three levels. So, which one to get first?

“Eh, decide when we’re there.”

Damn, I should’ve saved some Stat Points.

“Too late now, they don’t sell Stat respecs.”

Wait a minute.

“I’m waiting?”

“Do you suppose War Caster’s free stats are subject to my racials lowering the value of the stat points?” I asked.

There was a moment of silence, as we both considered it.

“I’m not sure,” Declan answered.

“But if I had to lean towards a side…” I prompted.

“It would be no,” we both said at once.

I opened up the page indicating my natural stat growth.

Growth:

+1 Wisdom per level

+1 Intelligence per 2 levels

+1 Free point that can be spent on CON or VIT per 2 levels

2 SP required to raise Dexterity

5 SP required to raise Agility

5 SP required to raise Charisma

“It says SP…” I muttered.

“It is rather specific wording.”

So theoretically, if I took War Caster and put the free points into agility…

“There would be a net increase of four SP and the War Caster ability.”

That raised its value significantly.

“However this is two points in AGI or CHA. Agility is a useful stat, but is it worth it to spend the points rounding out our bases instead of min/maxing?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?

It would only raise Agility to nine points.

But looking at it another way, it was a thirty percent increase to my agility.

“We’ll have to think about it on the way.”

My respawn timer ticked to zero and though the IP rewards gave me an idea, I had to confirm with my own eyes whether they made it out alive.