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The Gamer Chapter 909 – Big Class Grind 4 – The Goalposts
🕑 Added 2020-12-29 17:58:31 +0000 UTCJohn had 28 more Class Levels to go and he had several goalposts he wanted to clear.
First, and foremost, he wanted to finally unlock the Arcweaving Class.
With the current overabundance of available resources, it would have been foolish to push things off further in this regard. Taking the investment of two levels into Martial Artist was easily justified, especially since the other requirement, five levels into Arcanist, was along the path to his secondary goal anyway.
With the goal of increasing his personal power, after spending so much focus on his elementals, Artificial Spirits and girls in general, maxing out Arcanist was a clear choice. If the initial Arcweaving Perks looked promising, he would max it out as well. If not, then Class Levels for it would instead wander into Unfound. The blind man’s Class may not have been promising in the general power department, but it was likely to provide immense utility. If initial Perks disappointed there as well, John would send resources towards Metracana Master. That wasn’t personal power, but it was still power.
On the topic of utility, John also wanted to finish out the Fateweaver Class. It was unlikely that it would give him access to time dilation as powerful as Magoi’s. By the way the system had functioned so far, John guessed that one of the Advanced Class choices would be High Fateweaver and that would then enable him to pull some more phenomenal stunts in the barrier department.
Going by the most likely idea that he would at least be satisfied enough with Arcweaver to keep investing in it, the breakdown of goals looked roughly like this:
1. Bring up Fateweaver from level 3 to 10 – leaving 21 levels to be spent.
2. Bring Arcanist to from level 1 to 10 – leaving 12 levels to be spent.
3. Bring Unfound to level 1 – leaving 11 levels to be spent.
4. Bring Martial Artist to level 2 – leaving 9 levels to be spent.
5. Learn Arcweaving and bring it to level 3 to check out Perks – leaving 6 levels to be spent.
6. Spend the remaining 6 levels on Unfound, Martial Artist, Arcweaving or Metracana Master as best seen fit.
The argument could have been made that John should have been chasing straight for the level 10 in a third Class, rather than spread himself out. While the current Modifications and Overclocks he had were largely situational, every new one acquired may have been the extremely powerful one he could use in most situations. However, John was always tilted towards diversifying his move set, so chasing several goals with his current abundance of Perks fit his style more. He would gather information about Classes right now and fill them out later with the regular Maximum Class Levels he got every five levels.
With those decisions made, he decided to go for the easiest goals first. That was to say, he went through a series of minor trials to fill out all of the early levels for Arcanist, Unfound and Martial Artist. Early Class Challenges tended to be trivial either by design or because John’s general competence was just so much higher than the average person’s.
When the Unfound Class demanded that he blindly wandered a tightrope, that was far from an issue. John spent every morning blind, at the very least for the time it took him to go to the bathroom. Sure, most of the time, he supported himself with the Mandala Sphere, but the Gamer sometimes went completely blind by his own volition. It had become a part of him, as little as he liked the way it came to be. Searching for a cure had been universally unsuccessful, so he arranged himself with what would likely be the rest of his life.
That was his specific circumstance. His general competence was his Agility of 250 and the rough awareness of elements his summoned spirits granted him. Walking a tightrope with either would have been easy. With both, even recent blindness wouldn’t have been that much of an issue.
‘There is the Agility equivalent of that trash Copper Tongue Perk…’ John thought, immediately dismissing it. The other two choices had to be truly awful for him to go with that. Not that he thought the Stat bonus was irredeemable. It was highly likely Perks that improved on that one would make it at least valuable enough down the line. However, with the other two Perks being good enough to consider, the basic iteration of the Stat improvement was simply swept aside.
Beginner Aura Reading introduced yet another aura related term, which John loathed on a clarity basis. There was the lowercase aura, which was the exuding of mana that marked Abyssals and made them easily recognizable for other ones. Everyone (with eyes) could just look at Abyssals in a certain way and see the aura. Some people were better at it than others, but everyone could. Then there was the Active Aura, which martial artists used to boost their physical abilities and get the Ki flowing. Now there was the Soul Aura, which John assumed was similar to what Lorelei did when reading emotions. It would certainly fit the fact that she was blind and this was the Class for the blind. That may have been a pure coincidence, though, the Gamer didn’t really know what had taken the seer’s eyesight.
His issues with similar terminology aside, the passive was interesting, but its range limit made it rather unpalatable. Beginner Elemental Perception, while similarly weak, was a nice insurance policy. It meant his awareness stayed even if one of the elementals died or took a trip back home. Of the three choices, it was the most attractive one.
The Aura Sensing (letting him perceive regular auras without sight) was the sticking Bonus. That would be alright if that ever got range, but at the moment it was atrocious. John was nevertheless happy to invest more in Unfound in the future, with just those little tidbits of information. Just because his sight was technically better than most people’s already didn’t mean he shouldn’t sharpen the rest of his senses.
The first level of Unfound done, John went after the first two for Martial Artist. To that end, he needed the help of a few of his lovely ladies. The physical power trio of Rave, Metra and Eliza were great at demonstrating new techniques to him. With Lydia around to supplement their greater talent at the application with her ability to explain things well, John managed to get through the Martial Artist Challenges in about an hour.
John found the title changes quite interesting. Titles were chosen by the system and usually aligned with what people called that person, besides their name. Guild Rank were the official positions, albeit John misused his for cheap jokes or tokens of his appreciation, depending on the mood.
He didn’t have too much time to really think about these things as he was used as the sandbag by all four in their training. Eliza didn’t grow naturally in power anymore. What exactly that was due to, John didn’t know, but where her Stats may have been stuck, she could still acquire and deepen her understanding of martial arts. For that, she needed practice and repetition. John, being someone she could punch however much she liked without having to fear killing him, was an optimal partner for the practice bit. Same was true for Rave and Lydia. Metra just fought him for the fun of it.
With Particle Skin and his extreme pain resistance, getting tossed around for a couple hours sounded worse than it actually was. That he was unable to defeat any of the four in a physical fight was purely predictable. On the rare occasions that he did get a leg up on them, it was nice that their brawl could naturally flow into an extremely sweaty outdoor sex session.
For Magoi’s sake, Gnome had erected a wall around the improvised arena that she had also created. Combined with distance, it kept the noise in their corner of the shared space.
Their coitus breaks usually lasted only until John came once. If they had just indulged as they wanted, John would have lost a lot of time and he may have knocked the girls out by the power of his third leg. There was no debate over what the most powerful part of his body was.
Naked, exhausted and oddly fulfilled, John progressed through the Class Challenges.
The first set of Perks was extremely disappointing. Two of basic Stat Scaling Perks and a situational passive that would have been of minor support when he still counted his MP Regeneration in per minute. ‘I shouldn’t complain when picking up early Perks for what would be an early game Class under normal circumstances,’ he thought and picked Sturdy Body. A few extra Health Points had never hurt anyone.
Later on, he looked at those Perks. Mind of Work was the obvious choice, if only because he didn’t want to deal with Active Aura. Fundamentally, the other two were also alright. Mind of Expansion provided a pretty good amount of EXP for sitting around, but John got scaling experience for fucking, which was considerably more fun. Mind of Quality was interesting as a way to, potentially, power level slowly progressing Skills such as Artificial Spirit. Even with that, John didn’t really know when he would find two hours in his normal day where he would have time to meditate.
Whenever he had a considerable amount of free time, sex, dates, gaming or other ways of relaxation seemed to be a better way to use it. If he was still feeling productive after a day in the administrative paperwork mine, grinding dungeons was a much better way to get experience and other rewards. If he could keep the concentration up while having sex, that would make Expansion or Quality more attractive. As it was, Mind of Work at least had the practical application of getting him through the dull parts of his job as head of government.
Another decision made, John tapped out of the physical arena and left it to the maids to help everyone train.
In order to chase after the next Class, he went over to Nia. The pariah had been training several metres away from everyone. Nobody had insisted she kept away, but if she was going to practice her otherworldly powers, it was for the best. When it came to pure combat, she would have been welcome to join.
“Mind helping me with the Arcanist Challenges?” he asked, once she had turned to pay attention to him.
The pale blonde stood there, back straight and her light-eating, black weapons in her hands. One shoulder pointed at him, her blue eyes staring at him, located in an unmoving face. Strangeness surrounded her like a physical aura inspired by the tiny violins that preceded the reveal of the monster in a horror film. Slowly, she turned towards him, her colourless dress moving in non-existent winds. Slowly, she blinked, as if refusing to let him out of her sight. Slowly she tilted her head.
John smiled and patiently waited for her answer. He had grown so accustomed to her accidentally unnerving behaviour that only being hit by an actual display of her power could make him feel uncomfortable. For specific cases like this, he knew that she was simply suffering from an inability to emote properly and was also prone to thinking a long time about her answers.
“Can I?” she finally replied with a question.
“Might not be pleasant,” John was fully honest. “I’ll have to hit you with some genuine Arcane attacks, some of which you might not be allowed to dodge or neutralize. I just assumed it would be good training for you both in the anti-magic and the reality-altering self-healing front.”
After another fifteen seconds of silence, Nia said, “Yes.”
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