“Mom,” Brennan said. “How much Spirit do you have?”
Doris turned, taking a loaf of bread out of the pantry. “Spirit as in the attribute? Not a lot of it, dear.”
Pretty much what I expected.
After sleeping on it for a night, he had decided to ask his parents some probing questions in order to decide how to spend his attribute points.
Attributes were a great benefit to him before, of course, but he hadn't seen much merit in delving too deep into the details of how to base his build around one when he hadn’t had a way to increase them aside from rote practice. And in that, his philosophy had been to get whatever he could of everything.
Now, things were different. His latest achievement had granted him the opportunity to make an actual ‘investment’ into his stat points in the hopes that it would give him more momentum. Five points wasn’t a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, he imagined, but he was still going to make the most of it now that it still had a meaningful impact on his status and the difference in performance would be noticeable.
He’d asked about Spirit specifically because it was the most elusive stat. Not in terms of growth, but in terms of effect. He’d asked various people and consulted a multitude of texts about it, and he failed to get a clear understanding of what purpose it served precisely. It increased as a result of his Sense Magic training, implying that people without magic skills would struggle to increase it more, so he had been wondering if there was any practical use besides the esoteric-sounding ‘link between the soul and reality’ the system had provided him with as explanation.
As evidenced by his mother’s answer, it clearly wasn’t particularly popular with people who had Classes like hers. Her low score in the stat also coincided with the rest of the villagers he’d asked about it, who didn’t bother increasing it for the most part.
“Oh, I think I get it. Thanks Mom,” he responded.
She stopped to give him a look. “Why are you asking?”
“I wanted to know if Spirit was useless.”
“It’s not…” Doris paused for a brief smile, shaking her head. “You shouldn’t look at it that way. I’m thankful kids can’t mess with their attributes so early.”
If only you knew.
“The best way I can put it is, Spirit establishes your place in the world,” she said after giving it some thought.
“My place?” He was confused. What kind of philosophical nonsense was this?
“Yes. You may be asking yourself what good it does you, and the tangible effect is tricky to explain. The best way to put it is everything. Everything you do becomes more reliable if your Spirit is really high.”
Brennan thought that over while watching her put the bread on the kitchen counter. “So it would make me better at reading if I had enough of it?”
“I don’t think better is the right word for it, Brennan,” she said. “You would notice the influence of your skill more because you would be closer to it. That could lead you to use it more effectively compared to when your Spirit was lower.”
“Why don’t we get that immediately?” he wondered out loud. “It makes no sense to hold back part of a skill’s power if I already have it.”
“The same reason you aren’t born with the strength to uproot trees with one arm—to protect you from yourself,” Doris said in a soft tone. “But that is not the only thing Spirit does, it’s just one of its uses.”
“So what are the others?” Brennan asked, exasperated. Doris had a rather charitable view of the system in his opinion. He didn’t get the point behind holding someone back from utilizing their skills in the best possible way, and if anything that should fall under the mental stats.
“Mmm,” she hummed with a finger on her chin, likely thinking about whether she wanted to continue entertaining his curiosity or if she would start teasing him instead. Fortunately, she settled on the former. “Your resistance to outside forces improves. You’ll be anchored more deeply to your body. You become more in-tune with the Paths.”
‘The Paths,’ or ‘the Paths Network,’ as it was generally referred to in literature, was this world’s official name for the system. Her mention of it caught Brennan’s attention because he hadn’t heard that piece of wisdom before. “What do you mean by that last part?”
“To name an example, high-Spirit warriors might find it easier to curate their weapon skill to upgrade the way they want it to when it reaches the hundredth level,” she said, grabbing a knife to slice the bread.
So not quite a meta stat, but basically the closest thing to it.
Come to think of it, he’d read something about that, but he had written it off as metaphorical drivel since there hadn’t been anything clear-cut for him to take away from reading that passage. Now he was starting to rethink that.
Strata was the term used for the different race level categories in this world. Specifically, anything up to 24 was the first stratum, 25 to 49 the second, and 50 to 99 the third.
Not a single person in all of Craswidge was in the fourth stratum.
His mother’s race level was in the high thirties when he’d last asked, which was about a year ago, so he figured it was safe to assume she was in the low forties now. That meant she was a Second Stratum Housekeeper. From what he’d been able to glean, this was fairly normal, maybe a bit above average for her age.
The thing was, levels stalled out as you progressed. This was true for every aspect of the Paths. Skills, race, Class, each of these would be harder to advance the further along you got. He didn’t understand exactly what was necessary to break through the threshold waiting at ninety-nine, but he was starting to get the impression it wasn’t just a ton of experience points you had to grind. There was something else to it.
Not to say all elderly people in Craswidge were close to a hundred. Not even close, although their attributes did compensate for their weakening bodies and minds, making it so they outperformed the geriatric Earth population by a landslide. On top of that, they also tended to live longer, albeit more due to the fact that high Constitution prevented them from succumbing to a lot of the maladies that came with old age. Natural lifespans didn’t increase a whole lot.
At their level, anyway. The reigning king of their nation was centuries old, in the most moderate estimations. Brennan couldn’t find verifiable records of his date of birth. The man doubtless had a level in the triple digits as the bare minimum.
I have a long road ahead of me, even if I make it out of here.
“How do I talk to my soul?” he asked plainly. It was about time he told it to get its shit together.
Doris laughed. “Dear, you’re not supposed to- that’s not how it works. You’ll understand when you’re older.” She broke into another fit of giggles.
It wasn’t that funny, but he let her have this one and waited for her to calm down. A minute later, he spoke again. “What about mages?”
“Mages? I don’t know what happens when they put many points in Spirit, I think it has to do with the mana? You would have to ask one yourself to know for sure,” Doris replied.
The response was more or less within his expectations, but he’d been hoping for more. At the very least he could say he now had more context for the common uses of Spirit, just not for the only way he’d ever had to acquire more of it. In terms of observable differences, the only thing he had noticed from gaining more of that stat was that Sense Magic provided richer packets of information about the magical aspects of his environment than he’d thought.
After hearing his mother’s explanation, that made complete sense. If there was a difference in the manipulation aspect of mana, he didn’t have access to it. His mind went to the artifact he’d buried with Agnes yesterday.
The inert stone had been a confounding mystery to him throughout the night he’d spent tossing and turning before finally falling asleep. They had tried to test its functions a bit in the time they were trying to find a good spot to hide it, yet the basic attempts hadn’t given them anything useful.
Chances were, he’d just stolen something completely trivial and the merchant wouldn’t care it was gone other than in the sense that someone had uncovered their operation. Really, he should be kicking himself for blowing his investigation on a little trinket that for all he knew could have been the least useful item in that chest.
He wasn’t, though. In all honesty, he didn’t care about the fact that people were selling goods they weren’t supposed to if subverting those plans wasn’t necessary for ensuring his own safety. And he couldn’t be sure about that.
Additionally, there were rewards to be had that he didn’t have the physical strength to collect. He hadn’t even had the ability to lift a tray of potions out of an open box, nor did he have the power to wrench free that sword or any of those knives. Logically he could stop looking into the entire series of events right now, and he didn’t think his living situation would change all that much.
Except he had tipped the merchant off that something was missing. This would impact the trade in some way, though the how was simply impossible to figure out with so little information.
He did still have the means to help. He could go back to the granary and see what they were hiding, for one. But that had a high likelihood of getting him caught if not killed.
The other option was to go to the guard captain and… report them. The good old practice of snitching, a tried and true method. It would only work if he was both taken seriously and the village guards actually found something, but it was the best way for him to tie up a loose end.
He already had the basic idea in mind. With Lucent Comprehension and Drawing, he had drawn the items he saw in the metal chest after getting home, and he would deliver those drawings, along with a report, to the guard tower. Something along those lines, he was still thinking it over.
Later, he decided. In the present, he would focus on spending his free points. The decision of what to spend them on had been at the forefront of his mind ever since he got them, and he had a rationale that somewhat held up even in light of what he had learned about the seventh stat. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Essentially, the physical stats were going to be ignored. Not because he didn’t understand that being strong was useful, but because he could train them the most consistently. By process of elimination, that left the other four.
Wisdom was one he had considered for a time. It was overall probably the third-hardest attribute to increase with training, and quite useful as it aided his mental recollection and insight; a solid option, just not the best.
Intellect was in his estimation the most important given that it was what enhanced his mental processing capabilities by a fraction every time it went up. Should it see a more significant increase, the contrast would be far more apparent. Definitely what he was looking for.
Combined, these two were also the stats mages were known to gain in varying amounts upon gaining a mana-based Class. That was why they got extra attention from Brennan, even discounting that he kind of already loved them without that.
Perception had the greatest bearing on his Sense Magic skill. That was a solid argument for dumping all five points into it and calling it a day, though he wanted to be more conservative here. His resources were limited, and making the optimal choice could have ripple effects in the future from the tiny advantages he gained today.
Spirit, if he had to put his current understanding of it into a single word, seemed foundational. It helped all your other capabilities in subtle, non-flashy ways, be they direct or indirect. A large investment would pave the stones of his path to help him walk it. But a small investment would be akin to one brick. Next to nothing.
Then again, he could apply that logic to all his stats. Five points weren’t going to make him a god no matter how wisely he spent them. Attributes were an addendum to what was there to begin with, and the number required to pull off superhuman feats in any of them was likely at least twenty, if applied to a child.
The deciding factor for him was accessibility. Other kids in the village had never made mention of increasing their Spirit, leading Brennan to believe that any points his mother had in it came from free points provided by Class levels.
I’ll just do one.
To push himself to go through with it, he reminded himself that the longer he waited, the longer he would have lower stats to level his skills with which resulted in slower progress.
Attributes increased.
PER +1
INT +3
SPI +1
Satisfied, he looked over the results.
Attributes:
STR - 7
AGI - 10
CON - 5
PER - 6 -> 7
INT - 12 -> 15
WIS - 8
SPI - 7 -> 8
Now he would have to pray that it was enough to expose a criminal enterprise.
No pressure.