[CYA] Chapter 101: Cumulative Growth

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ET8s0pF2JMg4EIpvsCDAdtsIbPk6m_Y-wN4Q7iC3ok/edit?usp=drivesdk

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<Alex, Real - Endure, High School Classroom>

It had been around a week since they returned to the high school with the new groups of Initiates, and Alex was well and truly in his pattern.

He spent two of the ‘blocks’ between meals fighting, one with the Death Mage—Stephen—one sparring initiates and training with Master Adams in various martial skills, and one as a training partner for differing members of his group, where he mainly used his defensive skills.

Before the first meal, he worked on his symbol carving—mainly continuing to improve the carving and filling of the ‘strengthen’ rune on small bits of wood, though he also continued to quiz himself on the other symbols that he’d learned—and the time after the last meal was spent in meditation, working toward a mana cycling technique.

He rounded out his day with a shower and sleep—blessedly, he only needed about four hours these days, since he’d fully attuned his stamina ring. That was even after the increase to his food and rest needs due to increased Physical Power and Agility. He was all but certain they were the cause, with Physical Fortitude reducing the need just a bit once again.

Throughout much of his days—except when he was among the undead fighting and training—Mr. Weston went with him, allowing Alex to work on expanding his Inventory once again.

Alex had been very grumpy when the teacher had insisted that Alex remove the ‘bracing boxes’ before they started again. That had led to his Inventory shrinking by the expected ten percent or so, but after a day with that lessening, they’d begun the expansion again, and it had gone faster than ever.

All of his training had resulted in a good number of skill changes—mainly in the form of utility rarity improvements—and quite a bit of experience, as the number of undead wandering the streets had continued to swell to the point that they could outright kill those they engaged without lessening the training opportunities. In fact, it had quickly reached the point where they needed to do so.

Even so, Alex felt like he was nowhere near another level-up yet. It made sense as they were generally fighting ‘common’ undead, with only the occasional Uncommon or Rare variant among the hordes. That, added to the seven way split, did not lend itself to fast leveling of his Epic Class and Race. Still, since that wasn’t their aim, Alex was fine with it.

At the moment, he was licking his fingers clean of the ‘last call’ food while moving toward his meditation area, Mr. Weston occasionally manifesting the next box beside him as they walked.

Alex would then pull it into his Inventory, tightly fit around the previous, forcing a marginal expansion.

Ben was the spearman on ‘watch Alex’ duty at the moment, and he was chatting amiably with the teacher, giving Alex a solid excuse to look over his gains.

Advanced Kinesthetics (Uncommon) → (Rare)
Your body is your own, and it moves at your will. Weapons are great, and armor is useful, but being where you need to be, and moving how you need to move is more important than any mere weapon or armor. You have a solid, instinctive understanding how you should stand and move, as well as an innate sense when things are right or not.

Physical Agility and Power have greater effect when you are acting to reposition yourself or move as you desire.

Great-Blades Initiate - Dadao (Uncommon) → (Rare)
You wield the machete-like great-blade of yore. While it lacks the reach of many other great-blades, it makes up for that in versatility and close-range utility. You have a solid, instinctive understanding of how to hold this weapon and use it in combat. Moreover, your ability to reliably feel and follow those instincts is greatly improved.

Physical Power and Agility have a boost when wielding a dadao.

Stamina drains at a slower rate when wielding a dadao.

For his kinesthetics skill, his ‘growing’ instinctive understanding had changed to a ‘solid’ one, and his Physical Agility and Power simply had a ‘greater’ effect instead of a ‘marginally greater’ effect.

For his great-blades skill, he similarly now had a ‘solid’, instinctive understanding of his use of the weapon. Additionally, his ability to feel and follow instincts was now ‘greatly’ improved. His Physical Power and Agility boost had lost the ‘small’ modifier, and his Stamina drain was now simply ‘slower’ instead of ‘slightly slower.’

That might be the only places where the wording of those two skills differed—and those changes might seem minor—but Alex personally thought the implementation was night-and-day improved. He no longer felt like he was fighting with himself, just flailing around in the hopes of harming his enemies and protecting his friends. Nor did he feel that he couldn’t quite get his body or weapon where they needed to be. Now, it was almost as if the common undead they were fighting—and the occasional uncommon—were utterly incapable of harming him, even in large numbers. His only real challenge of late had been the aptly named Rare monsters among the throngs.

Beyond his baseline fighting skills, a few others had improved due to his hours of fighting every day, with the core aim being to advance his skills.

Danger Sense (Common) → (Uncommon):
Existence within the purview of the System is dangerous. Now, you are more aware of that danger.
Mental Power and Agility have a greater effect in whether or not you notice the presence of something which could cause you harm.
Physical Agility has a greater effect when reacting to anything sensed with this skill.

Detect Unlife (Common) → (Uncommon):
Spend Mana to get a look of the unlife around you.
One hundred feet of radius scanned—centered on the caster—per MP spent.
One second of information per MP spent.

Danger Sense lost the ‘marginally’ modifier on his Mental Power and Agility having a greater effect in noticing danger, and the same when reacting to it. But more than a change in wording, danger sense now felt almost like a breeze that he could feel against his skin instead of the vague, ‘something is wrong’ that he had before. That meant that he almost always had directionality to the danger that he sensed, at least when it was imminent.

While Force Burst hadn’t advanced, it felt like it was right on the edge of improving. He’d been striving to change the purely spherical explosion of power to one that was a bit more directionally focused, and while he’d managed to introduce a small gradient to the expanding bubble of power, he hadn’t quite gotten it to leave any given vector entirely unaffected. Soon, I’m sure of it.

Multi-Strike was similarly on a cusp. Each time he used it, he could feel the smallest nub of stamina extending from the working, as if begging to be extended and drawn into a third strike, if not a fourth or more. His stamina regeneration ring had allowed him to play around with this skill more as he seemed to get back more stamina from short breaks, sleep, and food. He even seemed to tire more slowly in combat, which he attributed to a background regeneration of the resource that was hard to quantify.

On the other hand, a spell that had finally expanded to match his Detect Life was Detect Unlife. Its new description was all but identical to the parallel spell, likely matching it because Alex had used one as a model for the other while he had been pushing it to act in the same manner. He’d also been using Detect Unlife quite often to help know what was coming their way, in order to feather the challenge they were facing, while working at the edges of what it could do, and that had finally borne fruit.

In the realm of skills, spells, and attributes, his ‘guards’ had continued to bombard him with Analyze—and equivalent—skills whenever reasonable, driving his basic resistance to examination up three whole levels. Moreover, his resistance to magic had advanced due to specific training with quite a few of the Initiates, both new and previously with him.  Well… that, and the fact that he still occasionally moved unexpectedly and ended up being the target—or entering the area of effect—of some magic or other from the spear wielders fighting alongside him.

Basic Resistance - Examination (Lvl 2)  → Lvl 5 

Basic Resistance - Magic (Lvl 1)  → Lvl 3

The occasional friendly fire—usually not literal fire—had inspired him to attempt to be more mindful of the magic around him, and because of that—and his continued pursuit of a mana circulation technique—both of his basic mana skills had advanced as well.

Basic Mana Sense (Uncommon) → (Rare)
Mana is everywhere within the System, now you have the ability to actually sense it.
Through exposure and intentional practice, you have learned to pull more than basic or generic information from your Basic Mana Sense. Moreover, you have worked to sense in all directions at all times, not relying on your eyes or focused attention alone to pull in such information.
Mental Power and Agility have a greater effect when you are trying to detect magic, mana, or other forms of power around yourself.

Basic Mana Manipulation (Common) → (Uncommon)
Mana is everywhere within the System, now you have the ability to actually interact with it.
Through exposure and intentional practice, you have learned to do more than simply slosh power around in the general direction needed to enact spells. In fact, you are gaining greater proficiency in large-scale movements of your mana as a whole.
Mental and Magical Power and Agility have a marginally greater effect when you are trying to manipulate mana around and within yourself.

Basis Mana Sense now let him easily sense in all directions, something that he had been able to do before, but he’d been relying on his eyes—and only really sensing mana when he focused on it—most of the time. Those crutches had now been cast aside. Additionally, he was also now given the familiar ‘greater’ effect of his stats rather than simply a ‘marginally greater’ effect.

He got the feeling that he could push his mana sense and danger sense to combine, but something warned him that doing so at this point would leave him with a skill that was worse than either, even if it would likely advance faster. As such, he didn’t spend his energy toward that end.

Basic Mana Manipulation—in contrast to many of his other skills—had gained the ‘marginally’ greater tag to stat enhancement, replacing the old ‘slightly’. Yup, really helpful, that. I am so glad to have the subtlety of language utilized in an otherwise number-heavy System.

Even so, the skill also gained a line acknowledging that he was now able to control the large-scale movements of his own mana. It wasn’t where he wanted to stop, but it was a massive improvement.

Finally, his continued practice with symbols—and growing stacks of carved wooden shingles—had resulted in changes to all his skills around their creation.

Basic Carving (Simple) → (Common)
Most craftsmen need to carve in order to bring out the best in their creations.
You have begun to lean on your understanding of the art, truly paying attention to the task and improving with time.
Physical Agility has a marginal boost when using this skill.

Crude Magical Symbol Facilitation (Simple)  → (Common)
You have the growing ability to craft the crudest of magical symbols, creating a persistent effect.

Basic Small Force Blade (Uncommon)
Create semi-permanent, cutting constructs of Force Magic.
These are generally useful for utility purposes, but they can function well enough for close-quarters combat in a pinch.
Through practice and close study, you have learned how to customize the length, width, angle, and even point of origin of these small constructs.
No inherent magical penetrative power.
Physical and Magical Agility have a minor boost when using this skill.

His Basic Carving showed that he was actually leaning on the skill well, and picking up the ability to carve more and more. It was a simple change, but he appreciated the positive reinforcement.

On the other side of the coin was Crude Magical Symbol Facilitation. All that change told him was that his skill was now ‘growing.’ He still found the name of his magical symbol skill a bit insulting—as well as the text, honestly—but it was advancing, so he decided not to dwell on it too much. The nature of it simply meant he had plenty of room to advance.

Basic Small Force Blade didn’t get a rarity advancement, but it did alter from letting him customize the blades once they were created, to creating them to his custom specifications upon creation. It wasn’t infinitely variable, but he found it rather nice to be able to imagine what he wanted and have it appear in that state. That had led to him having a bit of an idea on how to shape the blade for better carving in the future, but he hadn’t had a chance to test that, given this small change had only occurred that morning.

And that brought him to his final improvement:

Inventory (Common)
5ft cube → 7ft cube

The upgrade to his Inventory was the most basic of all his advances, simply being an increase in the stable size of his extra-dimensional storage. Still, he was quite happy with that progress as well.

Ben’s voice pulled Alex away from further contemplations. “Yeah, didn’t you know that Alex used to be a dancer? Not anything risque of course, but he was a back-up for quite a few notable singers.”

Alex blinked a few times, fully focusing on the conversation. Mr. Weston was clearly interested in what Ben was saying. “Really? I never would have guessed that about him.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t his agent, but I definitely heard of him through the grape vine. He could have gone main act if he wanted to, but he never liked the limelight.”

“That does seem in line with his—”

Alex cut across the teacher. “What nonsense is this?”

Ben glanced his way. “Oh, you’re listening? I thought you were focused on your status.”

“Yes, I heard you. What is this about me being a dancer? Why are you telling such things to others?”

The big man shrugged. “I didn’t know you wanted to keep it a secret. It’s not really something to be ashamed about.”

Mr. Weston patted Alex’s shoulder. “I don’t think less of you. Heavens know that I can’t move well enough to be a dancer.”

Alex growled as he gave a long exhale. “I have never been a dancer, Mr. Weston. He’s fooling you… for some reason.”

Mr. Weston turned to regard Ben. “Is that right? I wouldn’t expect a talent agent to lie about such things.”

Alex’s eyebrows rose. “Talent agent? He told me he was a hand model.”

Ben shook his head. “Come on, Alex. Now you’re being ridiculous.” He presented his clearly battered and scarred hands. “Who would believe that these were the hands of a model, let alone a hand model?”

Alex stopped walking, mouth open in impotent shock. Finally, he closed his mouth and eyes, letting out another little growl. “It doesn’t matter; it’s fine. Just ignore the man.”

Ben’s voice reached him. “That’s right, let the anger go, let it fade… into the background.”

Alex’s eyes snapped open as he glared at the snickering man. “Whatever, Ben. I have work to do.”

He strode the last feet to the door of his meditation room, catching three final expansion boxes from Mr. Weston before he bid the teacher goodnight.

Ben was continuing to chuckle to himself as he said goodbye to the man as well. The clearly bemused teacher departed before anything more could come to pass.

Alex gave a half-heated glare at Ben, then closed the door.

He needed to focus. As such, he closed his eyes, breathed deeply and spoke encouragingly to himself. “You got this, Alex. Let’s do this.”

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