Getting Perky

French class was… not John’s strong suit. It was among the three odd ones out in his otherwise stellar report card, along with sociology and PE. And he did pretty well in sociology too whenever it was anyone other than Ms. Stanfield doing the grading. The reason he had chosen it anyway was that Ashcroft required that he take a second language class and the only language that he had any semblance of interest in learning, Japanese, was taught by Ms. Stanfield. He had already known her by reputation then, and he refused to inflict her proximity upon himself any more than during the mandatory sociology classes. So the decision between remaining offerings, he left up to a literal die roll.

Not being good at the class would probably be a strong argument in favor of paying attention, but even before his entry into the Abyss, John had had a great deal of trouble mustering the will to actually care. Today, he had just handed over the note from Moira with a minimum of explanation, sat down at the back of class and promptly ceased to pay attention. His focus was much more drawn to the unread notification from the fight with Frank and the pile of unopened ones that had since joined it. He hadn’t paid attention to his UI between using the Hyde serum and ending the conversation with the Shield Warden, so he didn’t know when they had turned up.

… John now wondered if he could have won the fight with Frank without using the serum. Given that it had almost immediately turned into a one-sided stomp after he opened the notification window and used the serum, it seemed plausible. Meaning that he could have spared himself almost losing control enough to cripple someone for life, probably made a better impression on Moira, avoided any further difficulties the side effects might have in store yet, and kept the serum available for a future crisis.

That was a bitter pill to swallow, even if the Skill itself was pretty good. Not really something he wanted to make a mainstay, but if he did end up having to play the role of the tank, using Biomancy and alchemy to transform himself into something more suited to it was probably the way to go.

Achievement Unlocked: Set Them Up and Knock Them Down
Exploit a weak spot on an enemy that you created yourself.
Given that it’s a fairly obvious strategy, I figure you’ll have this by Tuesday.
Reward: +1 INT, +1 Unarmed Combat Proficiency Skill lvl

’Ha ha, very funny. I know you’ve been adjusting the commentary to fit the situation I got these in.’ Snark aside, he wasn’t about to sneer at free Skill levels or stat boosts.

Achievement Unlocked: Consecutive Normal Punches
Hit a foe with 5 melee attacks in a row, without missing and without the enemy counter attacking.
Of course the power behind them is about what Saitama could bring before he started training.
Reward: +1 AGI, +1 Unarmed Combat Proficiency Skill lvl

Achievement Unlocked: Flaming Fists of Fury
Hit a foe with 10 melee attacks in a row, without missing and without the enemy counter attacking.
I can only assume you made enemies with an inanimate object in order to get this.
Reward: +1 END, +1 Unarmed Combat Proficiency Skill lvl

And just like that, fisticuffs became his most developed martial skill. Between it synergizing with his Root Skills and it being useful if Frank needed a remedial lesson, that seemed pretty good. He was still hoping for a Quest reward down here, though, to confirm that he had gotten Frank off his back for the time being. Hopefully, that’d be the next window in the stack.

Achievement Unlocked: Ground Meathead
Publicly humiliate Frank Dickinson.
Shouldn’t be too hard, considering that he manages to do it himself roughly a quarter of the times where he opens his mouth.
Reward: +1 CHA, +1 Bluff Skill lvl, Crown of the Schoolyard King

An item that directly influenced RP gain was an item John wasn’t going to use. Or sell for that matter. He was going to leave it safely in his inventory until he got Craft to Skill Level 10, then recycle it for whatever materials that would get him. Depending on how the Skill EXP formula went, he’d probably get there in at most a month or two.

Visually, the thing wasn’t actually a crown. It was a red and white baseball cap with a crown symbol on the front. John would probably have found it super cool when he was 7 and borderline obsessed with the Pokemon anime. Not that how it looked would ever matter.

Level Up

And there it was. A Level up, if John recalled his numbers right, meant that he got some EXP for defeating Frank even without killing him. That alone was nice to know. And it came with more notifications for the stack just as he was getting close to the bottom, so 10 was probably a significant milestone of some kind. The money was nice to reclaim too, especially given that it got him closer to taking full advantage of the first purchase discount on the Abyss Auction.

The recipe was a bit of a letdown, since he needed to develop Craft a lot more before he could even use it. On the up side, that meant he would have raised his INT and WIS by then, and given what he had almost done, that was definitely something that needed to happen before he took another dose. As for his epic item, the Alchemfist, anything besides groaning at the pun would require closer examination.

That was a lengthy item description, but what an item! If he had still needed confirmation that alchemical pugilist was a viable build, this would definitely do the trick. And if it didn’t make punching stuff his best melee option right now, it would get there fast.

Better yet, the bit about equipping it with a two-handed weapon meant he could stick with alchemical weaponry at range as his first order strategy, and have a melee option as backup that partially scales with him improving his main strategy.

Really, this kind of expansion on what skills do would be the kind of effects he would expect to see on endgame gear not… well, the Level cap was 500 so 10 could probably still be considered part of the prologue. Which made him very excited for the item set he would get if he ended up settling on joining a guild.

Putting it into the right hand equipment slot for his second gear set opened a small window with the 3 reservoirs. It revealed that one was specifically for injection toxin delivered with piercing punches, one was for gradually releasing violently reactive substances, like alchemist’s fire, that added the relevant damage type to punches for a while and the last one was a general quick release reservoir for whatever liquid he felt like loading into it.

Visually, the weapon was a steel and leather full-sleeve gauntlet, including shoulder guard. Considering what it was, a video game item would almost certainly have readily visible, external glass bottles and obvious tubing for the reservoirs. Thankfully, this one just looked a bit bulkier than necessary, with a short length of visible tubing at the elbow and two nozzles and a hole emerging from the armguard near the wrist.

Achievement Unlocked: Crimson Gold
Make Moira Brighton blush.
Really, as long as you aren’t intimidated by her title, it’s easier than you’d think.
Reward: 50 EXP, 1 Gamer Treat, +2 RP with Moira (these are still predictions and assessments)

‘It isn’t really necessary to keep clarifying about the RP, I get the picture…’ John thought, trying to aim the inner monologue at Gaia. Or his system. Or both. While he received no worded response, the parentheses and the clarification within disappeared.

Achievement Unlocked: Tutorial Complete
Reach level 10.
While you are still a small fry weakling by Abyssal standards, you are no longer outright pathetic. Congratulations!
Reward: Perk system unlocked

Now that was aweso- before he could even try to find out how to open that system, his next notification opened itself.

Notice
Now that you’re out of the tutorial, it’s time to make a few choices about your skill set. You must choose 10 skills to keep, up to 2 of which can be root skills. Gamer’s Body, Gamer’s Spirit, Observe and Barrier Basics will be kept as well. The other skills will be removed, and the sum of their skill levels allocated to kept skills instead. If any removed skill has a skill perk, the perk point will be refunded. Going forward, triggering the creation of a new skill will be significantly harder.

Kept Skills: 0/10 (Root Skills 0/2)
Gamer’s Body
Gamer’s Spirit
Observe
Barrier Basics

Until you have made your choices, EXP gain and Skill EXP gain is disabled.

Okay, that was kind of a bucket of cold water on his excitement. At least he would likely be funneling Skill Levels from low-Leveled Skills into higher-Leveled ones. With all EXP gain off until he made the choices, he needed to do it ASAP. But if possible, he would like to see what the Perk System had to offer first. Best to be as well informed as possible for those decisions.

Opening his Character Sheet, he found a new tab labeled ‘Perks’. Upon changing to it, it was immediately obscured by a window.

Welcome to the Perk System.
One Perk Point is gained every 5 levels and can be spent to purchase perks on a 1-to-1 basis. Additional points may be earned through achievements, quests, or other sources.

Perks are divided into 4 types:
Skill Perks are attached to specific Skills and take up a Skill Perk Slot on that Skill. Perk Slots are unlocked for every 25 Skill Levels, and Perk selections are generated for each eligible skill. Skill perks improve, expand upon, or evolve the Skill they are attached to, or unlock a new, related Skill.

Ability Perks are attached to Abilities and take up an Ability Perk Slot on that Ability. Ability Perk Slots are unlocked for every 25 points of base ability score. Ability Perks offer improvements within or related to the activities governed by that Ability Score.

General Perks do not take up perk slots, letting you have as many as you can afford. They offer improvements related to your systems that fall outside the purview of Skill and Ability perks, as well as improvements related to Special Skills that cannot gain Skill Perk Slots.

Epic Perks are a rare type of highly powerful perk. You gain an Epic Perk Slot every 100 levels.

So to start with, Skill Perks and Epic Perks weren’t relevant yet. Beyond that, there was a good chance that General Perks were the weakest type of Perk since they were less limited. This also meant he should get every Ability Score to 25 at some point, so he could see what kind of Perks were on offer. There was another slide of introduction before he could get to look at the actual thing though.

Perk Selection
When you open the Perk choices for a given type of Perk, a selection of 3 Perks is generated from all applicable Perks you qualify for. This selection remains until you buy a Perk from it or manually redraw it.

When you buy a Perk, a new selection is generated automatically. You can pin a perk if you do not wish to buy it with the current Perk Point but wish to ensure that it will be in the new selection.

Manually redrawing a Skill Perk selection costs Skill EXP from the skill equal to 10% of the amount needed to gain the next Skill Level. Manually redrawing any other Perk selection costs EXP equal to 10% of the amount needed to reach the next level.

John would have preferred to be able to see all the Perks he qualified for. Actually, he would have preferred to be able to see the ones he didn’t qualify for as well. But given that his system’s scope was all of existence, he could see how that could quickly balloon far beyond reason. Anyway, Perk Point gain was apparently retroactive, and between his Level and the rewards from the Big Damn Hero Achievement he had 4 to work with. Time to take a look at the options.

Speed reading was a no brainer. Between the amount of times he had wanted to read notifications while other stuff was going on and the value of making it easy to read Observe results in the middle of combat, it knocked the other two out of the park. It was the next best thing to him having a pause button to press while he read tooltips.

He considered pinning one of the other two, but ultimately decided against it, as he didn’t really have an idea about what power level to expect in general. For all he knew, they could be comparatively underwhelming, even if both looked pretty useful in a void.

Nevermind about General Perks presumably being weaker, Gamer’s Mind was outright amazing. The resistance might be somewhat niche, but in a world where actual mind control existed, it was also invaluable, and didn’t come with the drawbacks of being a temporary consumable like the Elixir of Clarity did. Plus, they presumably stacked.

The second part of the ability was kinda gravy. John thought he’d mostly been doing a good job of keeping his head in tense situations when not under the influence of something, but extra assurances were always nice. Actually, if side effects like the Hyde Serum’s were common in buffing elixirs, it might be quite valuable as well.

The one he felt a deep, visceral desire for, however, was Sleep Menu. Sleep issues had been a regular thing in John’s life for as long as he could remember. In fact, getting tired of tossing and turning and deciding to hop on the computer was more or less how his habit of staying up late to play games got started. Sure, he had slept pretty well the past three nights, but he knew from experience that those streaks never lasted long. In the end, he pinned Gamer’s Mind and took Sleep Menu first.

The first one was kind of whatever, but Eye for Treasure was some very nice utility. So he pinned it and grabbed Gamer’s Mind.

Now this was a hard choice. Which was kind of appropriate for his last Perk Point. All of those were super useful utility, even if none of them were direct power boosts.

Smartphone integration would make a host of utility functions a mere thought away, and combined with Speed Reader’s Technique and Observe, he could access a lot of information very quickly. And that was without knowing if there was further glory to be found from Abyssal apps. Plus, there was a chance this would let him take pictures or recordings through his eyes at a moment’s notice, which had its own set of spicy benefits.

Aside from making it much harder to miss loot, Eye for Treasure could serve as a potential early warning system. Someone with particles on a lot of their possessions were likely to be Abyssal, and it seemed very likely that at least some traps would be magic items. After what happened when he Observed Wentworth, he wasn’t going to assume that it would be any kind of foolproof. Passively countering, say, 20% of all nasty surprises in the future was still pretty good though.

For the Minimap, John had played more than enough team games to know never to underestimate the value of quickly and efficiently sharing and coordinating information. On that note, the health, mana and status bars in the Party System were already pretty good compared to what people otherwise had to work with and this Perk was far better than that.

After several long minutes of contemplation, which were interrupted along the way by a targeted question from the teacher that John couldn’t answer, he decided to pin Minimap and select Eye for Treasure. But he hoped to see Smartphone Integration in the options again in the future.

With that settled, he was back to the question of which Skills to keep. He was keeping his Root Skills, having already chosen them over the other two he could get within an acceptable time frame. Keeping those meant he needed to keep Craft and at least one that branched off from Biomancy. Actually, it was best to keep two, as that seemed to be the necessary minimum to get the Root to Level up.

One of those two was going to be Enhance Muscle. That Skill was simply too versatile and useful. For the other one, he was inclined to go with Alter Body. While the current version was purely cosmetic, passive Skill EXP gain for the Root was crazy good. More skill levels would let him practically become a shapechanger, and the base was so versatile that if a Skill Perk came along that granted non-cosmetic uses, it could instantly catapult into absurdly overpowered.

That left 5 he could pick between Climax Control, Bluff, Theurgic Focus, Theft, Taunt, Accelerate Recovery, and the 4 proficiency Skills. With the necessity of combat capabilities and his intended approach to that, Squirt Gun Proficiency was a given. And with the Alchemfist, Unarmed Combat Proficiency was by far the better melee option.

With that, he could toss the remaining melee Skills with 3 picks left over. Theft was an easy toss as well. While it had saved his proverbial bacon in the first barrier, he hadn’t used it since and picking things up at a distance was the only thing he was going to use it for regularly. He still didn’t want to use it for its obvious primary purpose.

Taunt had seen a bit more use, but he still didn’t want to be the tank. While he did prefer to take damage over, say, Qhila taking it, going in to take damage as his main plan was not something he wanted. Plus, the reason he had needed it against the rat ogre in the forest was because his melee prowess was insufficient. With the Alchemfist, that shouldn’t remain the case for long.

The next one he considered culling was Accelerated Recovery. However, while he had found it disappointing at first, talking about it, and magical healing in general, with Qhila had made him reconsider its value. Plus, it was likely a necessary stepping stone to better options anyway.

Putting Climax Control on the chopping block to throw a lot of Skill Levels at the ones he kept was tempting. But most of those would be trading down on Skill EXP values since they would go to lower-leveled Skills. That shouldn’t really be a dealbreaker since they would transfer into things that’d help him stay alive. But… he really liked having a sexual prowess ace in his back pocket, especially since prospects had been looking better and better in that department these past few days. And while he should be focusing on survival and practical Skills, keeping one vanity option wasn’t so bad, was it?

Actually, now that he was kinda sorta looking for a justification to keep the Skill, he remembered the Artistic Understudy Quest. And the big reward attached to the bonus objective of impressing June in the coming weekend. Originally, he had intended to make some sort of preparations for it, but with everything that had happened since, that wasn’t really on the table anymore. Which meant that his best bet for it was hoping he could ad lib his way into making Climax Control matter. If the epic item on offer there was anything like the Alchemfist…

That put the choice for what to cull between Bluff and Theurgic Focus. Between those… Well, he didn’t like lying unless it was for a good reason, so the former was largely going to get used to keep mundane people around him separated from his Abyssal activities. That was certainly important, but he had managed well enough Monday evening to get his family to trust him despite not having the Skill yet and having a terrible CHA. So it seemed like what he wanted to get out of it, he would get just by raising the stat in the first place.

Meanwhile, his best skill had a casting time, his heal was channeled and two out of three Biomancy spells he knew were helped in tight spots by Theurgic Focus. In that light, the choice was clear.

Notice
Now that you’re out of the tutorial, it’s time to make a few choices about your skill set. You must choose 10 skills to keep, up to 2 of which can be root skills. Gamer’s Body, Gamer’s Spirit, Observe and Barrier Basics will be kept as well. The other skills will be removed, and the sum of their skill levels allocated to kept skills instead. If any removed skill has a skill perk, the perk point will be refunded. Going forward, triggering the creation of a new skill will be significantly harder.

Kept Skills: 10/10 (Root Skills 2/2)
Gamer’s Body
Gamer’s Spirit
Observe
Barrier Basics
Low Alchemy
Biomancy
Craft
Enhance Muscle
Alter Body
Squirt Gun Proficiency
Unarmed Combat Proficiency
Accelerated Recovery
Climax Control
Theurgic Focus

Until you have made your choices, EXP gain and Skill EXP gain is disabled.

That left just a single bit of bookkeeping left: his Stat Points. With the addition of the Perk System, he was now incentivized to get his important Abilities to 25 as soon as possible. INT was already there, and with his current WIS supporting a decent production rate of Alchemist’s Fire, he should probably focus on what he needed for combat.

For that, his first order strategy was DoTs and kiting, with a fallback of hoping that his melee plus the DoTs would let him secure victory. For that, he could use Enhance Muscle to buff either his mobility and ability to evade attacks, which would be STR or AGI on his legs depending on what the footing demanded, or his ability to keep moving for extended periods by going for END. Which meant the former benefited more from the flexibility of coming from buffing, while the latter would be served just as well by fixed stat that also came with increased capacity to survive damage. 5 points into END it was.