A systematic Approach [depreciated]

This branch is depreciated. I won't be continuing it. If someone wants to, feel free to do so.

Loading PRO_GAMER_HUD... Loaded.
WAIT_TRY_LATER variable not null, aborting.

That, felt weird. I still could not see, hear or feel anything. There were the two messsages. I didn't quite see them. More likebecame aware of them? I guess it's the two godesses doing. Most likely a preparation for the Light's "Interception" or whatever they'll do to add their part of the deal.

'I wonder how will they do their th...' My thought process was rather brutally interrupted by a searing light. I probably would have screamed and trashed around in agony. But I couldn't. I'm not sure how long it all took, nor what was happening during that timespan. All I could do was percieve the scorching pain, burning my very being.

Loading CLASS module... Loaded.
Initaitng system connection...
Loading MONSTER module... Loaded.
User credentials acknowledged.
Loading PROGRESSION module... Loaded.
Loading QUEST_LOG module... Loaded.
Loading CLOCK module... Loaded
Loading QUEST_POINTER module... Loaded
Loading GOD_EYE module... Loaded
Class compatibility error - 'Barbarian' conflicts with race 'Spirit' — resolving.
Loading CLASS_DEVEL module...
conflict detected... CLASS replaced by CLASS_DEVEL.
Monster Core stability compromised, initiating emergency mode.

Ahh... A flurry of system messages. It's somewhat nostalgic. I stopped paying attention after a while. Mostly because I started freaking out about that emergency modething. There were more messages, I just overlooked them. I think it is rather understandable.

Anyway. After I stopped freaking out about the state my core was in I noticed I had sensory input, which is to say, I could percieve my surroundings. And feel pain. Because obviously everything would hurt. Trying to move only made the pain flare up, so I decided to interact with the HUD. At least it reacted to mental commands, otherwise it would have been a very unpleasant time.

Aaand thus I completed a quest. Huh. Well... I would have gotten XP for that... buuut... My core was kinda barely holding on and all XP I gained was being funneled into fixing it. Or rather, to keep it from crumbling to dust, which would rip my soul apartin the process. Lovely. Just fucking lovely. Did I have to be greedy? Couldn't I have stayed with my pretty good Arcane Core?

Before I started wallowing in self blame I noticed something like an... achievement popup. Ah, it's from Melanoche.

If you are reading it. You are alive. For now.
You are extremely lucky you told us about your... "deal" with the angel. Otherwise they would have completely eradicated you. Cheating as usual.
If you manage to survive long enough for your core to meld and mend, we'll count that as achieving a victory against the Light.
Good luck and have a 69, anon.
XP reserved

'Hmm... thats... well, it. I can't really do anything about this, other than try to farm as much XP as I can. Though the XP amount is a nice touch. Almost certainly Carnachias' doing,'

With that in mind I took a look at my character sheet. The core was... gibberish. Rapidly changing gibberish. About as much as I had expected. 'Voidbeast Spirit, lesser' was my Race. Did me starting as a Therionic with an arcane core influence that? Probably. Class was, obciously, Barbarian. It had a shimmer to it. I decided I'd come back to it after finishing the rest of the fields.

Spells were rather obvious. Perks looked as if it would take me to the list of perks. So I skipped it for now. The Quest Log was next to check after the class screen. Empowerments... most likely lumped Monstrous Powers and the Blessings and the like together. Inventory was rather self-explanatory. Achievements... Yeah. Most likely a log of all achievements. System log... yeah, that one was also rather obvious.

I then took a look at my stats. They were hideous. My maximum HP? It was 2. TWO. I'm pretty sure it was more a while ago. Oh. Apparently it was due to my very fucked core. Once i run out of stored XP, my max HP will start draining. Marvellous. Other than that, my stats are kinda what I had expected: low strength - sitting at 4 (with a debuff that brought it to 2); very high agility with a score of 20(debuffed to 10); surprisingly high endurance with a 15(yet again, debuff brought it down to 7); and mental stats in what I would assume to be average of a human - which is Intelligence 11, Wisdom 11 and charisma 11 respectively (all were brought to 8). What I didn't expect was a libido stat. Which was at 20, but debuffed to 2.

With my general overview done and because my stored XP ticled down to 66, I focused on the shimmering "Barbarian" entry. I expected a skill tree. You know, a few main skills and some branching choices? What I got was a little more. It was a multi-dimensional graph. I couldn't quite perceive too much away from the "spot" lit up by Barbarian skills I had. I was vaguely aware of potential directions of development, possibilites of what this class of mine could turn into. And what was impossible for me.

Good news, I didn't loose the Rage. What I lost though, was almost everything related to dealing with spirits. On the other hand... I apparently could try and design my own skill branch. That's the feeling I recieved at least. Rushing that would be a supremely bad idea, worse than deciding to get creative with my core. With that in mind I focused my attention on Rage. It was good. The defense debuff was a nonissue - anything that would have been able to deal 2HP of damage to me would most likely be able to do so even without my reduced defense. Trippled attack though? That was potent. Even with my meager strength (further reduced by the debuff caused by my core) i could be rather threatening.

I decided to try and upgrade it. First thing I searched for was removing the inability to use spells. It either was not possible period, or not possible yet. What i could do was make the rage more useful now. Hmm... actually... it seems I could switch the Rage for something else... And Ferocity looked mighty interesting. It no longer tripled attack... but it also didn't make me an easy target. Lovely. Double damage and increased aglity for quartering my ranged accuracy? Well "ranged" as in anything further than about 15m. And to make it an even sweeter option: I could sense a path for spellcasting later on.

With that done I decide to take a look at my quests. And recieve another Achievement, this time not immediately useful.

ACF picker
+ skill point

And much more concise. While I was indulging myself in another bout of character building, my XP trikled down to 60. I'd better hurry.

Right, the Quest log. I had a couple of tabs, most of them were empty. First one I looked at was EPIC. This one simply listed the "targets" from both the Light and the Dark. Not very surprising. There were also "Dungeoneer" and "Slaughterer", which were rather obvious. The second tab I checked was labeled Daily. It had a slew of quests. Things like "Travel", "Combat", "Survival", "Carnal" and a couple of others. Out of curiosity i checked the Carnal daily quest.

Rather predictably the quest had copious amounts of objectives, or rather objective groups, because apparently fucking a wood elf and fucking a dark elf are two different objectives. The groups were varied, from "Oral" and "First Time", through "Voyeurism", "Orgy" and "Impregnation" going further and further... Enough to say that there's probably a daily quest for anything I might do. And for many things no one should ever do.

With that out of the way, I decided it was high time to take stock of my surroundings, and my body. At least I wasn't hurting anymore. I assumed it was because I had a buffer of XP.