System Change

“Okay,” Derek said to Brandi, as the girl could hardly contain herself. “How are you going to do it? Are you going to eat one of the Void Beast meals? You said you’d need two levels, otherwise, right?”

“I did,” Brandi replied. “I’m level 115 right now, but I’m really close to 116. But I don’t think I’d get the full value out of another Void Beast meal right now, so I wanted to level up to get it.”

“I see,” Derek said. Luckily, he had nothing else to do, so waiting on her to get two levels would be fine—though he didn’t think it would be possible for her to get the levels in a single day. “Well, like I said, I have time now.”

“Oh, we won’t need much time,” Brandi said with a grin. “I have just the item to craft. I’ve been waiting for a long time to make it because I know that it’s going to give me multiple levels once I do—it’s already given me some levels when just from failing before.”

That’s interesting, Derek thought. “What kind of item is it?”

“Hehehe…” Brandi laughed childishly. “You’ll find out soon. I can’t wait.” She clenched her fists in excitement.

“Fine,” Derek said. “I’m patient. You don’t know how long I had to wait for my glaive to be finished. It was agony.”

“I bet,” the young smith said as she hopped over to her workstation—dragging her stool behind her—and pulled out a number of papers and began moving them around. “It’s been weeks since I figured out how to successfully make this. It’s been driving me crazy not being able to do anything but work on leveling up my skills.”

“How does that work, anyway?” Derek asked. “Can you halt your leveling and upgrade your skills fast by working on high-level materials and never finishing the items to gain experience points? Couldn’t you just fly through your skill levels?”

“I wish,” Brandi said. “I thought it was like that at first, but the more I work with a certain material and the more proficient I become with it, the harder it is to use to level my skills with. However, when the rarity and level in a material is much higher than my own, it seems that the initial bonuses I get when learning to use it is much more than common material or things at my own level. It’s exhausting, really—constantly having to think of new creations and new material combinations to gain levels and skill experience.”

“Oh,” Derek said. “That does sound exhausting.”

“But I love it!” Brandi said without bringing her head up from one of the papers laying on her workstation. She took what looked like a pencil out of her storage, then scribbled something down. “If all else fails with levels, I can always go out and kill stuff… I think. I haven’t tried, but I think that’s how it is. Of course, that would also make it where I would lose out on that bonus skill experience from materials that end up under my level.”

“Yeah,” Derek said. “You wouldn’t want that. It’s always best to focus on your class skills first and your base level last—unless you really need to, like Edgar had to do. I think he’s always going to be mad over having to power level his base level over his skills.”

“Mhm…” Brandi muttered in agreement as she continued to move things around. “Okay!” The smith hopped to her feet, then quickly moved to her little crafting area. In the next instant, she was covered from head to toe in gear and goggles. It seemed that she had learned her lessons, and there wasn’t an inch of skin left uncovered. “I’m going to begin now.”

“Go ahead,” Derek said and waited for her to begin. As soon as she took out some material and began working, Derek slowly put away the stool and pulled out one of his own chairs. He didn’t know how long it was going to take the girl to finish whatever it was she was crafting, but damned if he was going to sit on a wooden stool with no back or cushion the whole time.

It was the first time Derek had ever really watched Brandi work, and he had absolutely no idea what she was doing. It felt just like when Tyron was making his glaive and he was watching. Other than seeing the glaive take shape, and some hitting with a hammer, Derek had been totally lost.

So, for the next handful of hours, Derek watched as the girl banged on materials with a hammer, chiseled some stuff into whatever it was that she was working on, then continued with the hammer. She heated things and cooled things, struck things, and even moved whatever it was she was working on to other crafting areas where she used different skills—all the while, Derek was happy that he had chosen a combat class. All he had to do was figure out how his skills worked and hit things hard.

Then, after another few hours, Brandi moved to her runesmithing station with an item that Derek could finally guess what was. She was meticulously etching runes on a small pair of boots. Her hands were so steady, and she was so focused, that Derek even held his breath so as to not disturb her rhythm any. From chatting with Geoffrey, he knew how delicate runes were.

After some time, Brandi finished one boot and moved to the next, where she repeated the same process as before. Finally, she finished up, leaned back from the runesmithing station and let out a sigh. She turned to Derek. “Ready?” she asked.

“Yup,” Derek said, finally breathed again.

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Brandi nodded and leaned over the boots one more time. Then, with one last touch, she shouted, “Done!” Instantly, she jumped from her seat and turned to face Derek. “Oh! Oh, ah! Woah.” She shook a few times, and her eyes widened so big that Derek could even see them through the soot covered goggles she was wearing. Finally, she took in a deep breath. “I… did it? Was that it? No pain?”

“Seems so,” Derek laughed. The first breakthrough wasn’t anywhere near as harsh as the next ones. When a person hit 500 stat points in any single skill, it was nothing more than a quick, intense rush of strength, or mana, or clarity—whatever the stat that they broke through in represented. In Brandi’s case, she was close to breaking through with her endurance.

That meant that she would get a surge in her stamina recovery rate. If nothing else, she would feel like a normal human from Earth that just drank one too many cups of coffee—she’d be a bit jittery.

“Wow!” she said in excitement.

“What is it?” Derek asked.

“I got five whole levels from finishing that. That’s way more than I thought.”

“Oh,” Derek said. “Wait, then that means you got… 27 stat points? In everything?”

“Yup,” she replied. “I broke through in strength, dexterity, and endurance. And I’m really really close with the other three, too. Only three points away for intelligence and ten for both wisdom and vitality.”

“Huh,” Derek said. “That’s exactly what we were trying to avoid by separating your stats out with the Void Beast meals. It’s a good thing it was only the first breakthrough, otherwise, you would have had to go through the process of the system rebuilding your bones, tendons, skin, and muscles all at once, and that would have been horrific. I couldn’t even imagine doing all three at once at a lower level.”

Brandi reached up and pulled her goggles to the top of her head before looking at Derek in shock. “Really? Is it that bad?”

“Yeah,” Derek said. “Breaking through in endurance felt like millions of ants were crawling in my skin. It itched so bad that you wouldn’t believe… though, the pain from the strength and dexterity breakthroughs might actually be enough to take your mind off of the itching…” Derek placed his hand on his chin in thought. That probably would have made it much more bearable for me,he thought, but he wasn’t sure that others would prefer the pain over the itching—it was just his personal preference.

“You’re definitely going to have to be here for when I do that,” Brandi said. “That sounds terrible!” She visibly shivered.

“That’s a deal,” Derek said. “You have a long way to go for that, though. So you have plenty of time to prepare. Just make sure you let me know when you’re getting close.”

Brandi nodded seriously, then looked back up at Derek with a frown. “What skills should I pick?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Derek asked, confused.

“I just got an achievement called Offensive Powerhouse for getting both my strength and dexterity up to 500 points. You’ve gotten the achievement before, right?” she answered.

“Oh, that.” Derek nodded. That was the achievement that got me Multi-Strike and Sweeping Slash, right? Those two skills were great for me. I wonder if it gives the same options to everyone, or if it’s specific to the class or person. Well, there’s only one way to find out. “Do you have the option to pick Multi-Strike and Sweeping Slash?” he asked.

Brandi’s eyes went distant for a moment, then she replied, “I can pick Multi-Strike, but there’s nothing about a Sweeping Slash.”

“Hmm…” Derek thought back and tried to remember the skills he had available. It would be good for Brandi to have a couple really good offensive skills just in case she ever had to fight one day. She would definitely have the stats for it. If I recall correctly, there was a mastery skill. It may not hurt for her to pick up an offensive hammer mastery. “Tell me what skills you have to choose from. Oh, and do you even have skill points to unlock the skills?” He remembered that her class rewarded skills automatically and instead gave skill upgrade points.

“I do. I’ve gotten a few with different achievements. Just that Jack of All achievement gave me 15 points to all my stats and two skill points when all of my stats hit 200,” she replied.

“Ah,” Derek said. “I had almost forgotten about that achievement. That’s good. Then you should be fine. What skills do you have to choose from?”

Brandi then read off the list of ten skills that she had been given to choose from. Included on it were Multi-Strike, Enhanced Strike, Rapid Movement, and a mastery skill. Derek remembered having those same options when he chose long ago. However, where the rest of his possible skills were piercing and slashing skill like Sweeping Slash and Lightning Pierce, hers were replaced with blunt type skills that seemed to be made specifically for her hammer.

I wonder why I haven’t seen any people using Multi-Strike. Is it special? Maybe it’s just not something that’s easy to make out to someone watching it. It’s a fantastic skill. No matter how you look at it, he couldn’t help but think. I’ll have to ask Edgar or Avery about it… or even Jacks, actually. Surely they’ve all received that achievement.

Out of the other skills that she read off to him, he was intrigued by one called Smith’s Inferno, which was a skill that had her hit the ground with her hammer and release a wave of fire in all directions. There was another called Boulder Crush, which was just as it sounded, a heavily enhanced blunt strike. Other than that, she had an Augment Hammer option, which seemed like it converted mana into a shield to enhance the hammer as a whole.

Derek thought that the augment skill sounded good for a smith, but Brandi was quick to shoot it down because she already had other augment skills. Another decent area of effect skill she had was called Seismic Impact, which was almost the same as Smith’s Inferno, but caused an earthquake instead of a ring of fire. She also had one that reminded Derek of a skill he’d seen Tyron use.

It was called Anvil’s Wrath, and it summoned a massive, spectral anvil that fell from the sky and crushed any enemies in its targeted area. And finally, she had a skill called Blacksmith’s Frenzy, which was basically an enhanced berserker skill that lowered her defense in exchange for pure offense. It was like the Glass Cannon skill that Derek was initially offered.

“If I’m honest with you,” Derek said. “I don’t really know. What are you thinking?”

“I like the sound of Anvil’s Wrath,” she said with sparkles in her eyes.

He, too, liked the sound of that skill. It seemed like a good ranged area of effect skill. Derek also thought that Rapid Movement would be good for her, but he didn’t suggest it because he’d seen quite a few movement skill scrolls that he could probably get for her. “I would probably pick one of the area skills, like Anvil’s Wrath or Smith’s Inferno. Then, I would also pick Multi-Strike. If it works the same way, you may even be able to enhance most of your other skills with it. It could even help in your smithing, actually.”

“Great!” Brandi half shouted with her excitement. “That’s what I was leaning toward.” Her eyes went distant for a moment, then when they focused again, she gave a big grin. “I got them!”

“Nice!” Derek congratulated her. “Now… about that pair of boots. What’s got you so excited?”