Does grinding count if it's not the fun kind?

The rest of the morning flew by with no further complications. My prior knowledge of the lecture’s topic meant I could only half listen whist still making pertinent notes, allowing to focus on grinding out my new skills.

With my mana regen where it stood, I had the mana to ping off an analyse every four minutes solely relying on my regeneration. Roughly one hour (and 15 classmates analysed) later, I received another notification.

Analyse has reached Lvl 3!

Activation cost: 2 mana -> 1 mana

I was sorely tempted to keep practicing with Analyse with the hopes of being able to use it for free eventually, but instead switched to Identify in the hopes training it too. The results I received back were often less than helpful. My first target, my pen, for example, returned the following.

Black ballpoint pen.

It is a pen.

Still, I persevered, and after three more scans, I levelled up the skill and unlocked my first upgrade.

Identify has reached lvl2!

Items scanned now display their base durability. If an item uses a finite resource, Identify will now show you the percentage of that resource remaining.

Curious about the new changes, I scanned my pen again.

Black ballpoint pen.

It is still a pen.

Durability: 5/5

Ink remaining: 13%

‘Huh, neat.’

Identify Lvl3 took another 15 scans to gain, in which time I discovered that the little ‘I heart safe sex’ sticker was somehow buffing me with two points of wisdom whilst equipped. Reading through the skill-up notification, I nodded as I saw it too reduced the mana cost to 1 per cast.

We all made it to the 11am break without anyone nodding off, an achievement in and of itself. We all filed out of the room, grateful for the half hour we got to stretch our legs and make use of the facilities.

The girls didn’t have any plans, so I showed them to one of my favourite little coffee shops tucked away on campus. Aware of the opportunity for brownie points up for grabs, I offered to get them both a coffee. The bashful way both girls accepted the offer was a delight to observe, and the warm smile each girl gave me as I brought their drinks to our table was enough to melt my heart.

We talked through the lecture as we sipped on our drinks. Both girls seemed pleasantly surprised by my familiarity with the topic, and Sophie floated the idea of the occasional joint study nights. Neither Annie nor I had an objection, so we went ahead and organised one for a few days’ time.

As the conversation shifted to more casual topics, I was in full on multitasking mode. Whenever I had the mana, I scanned passers-by with Analyse. From the looks of my experimentation this morning, it seemed like scanning someone or something for a second time wouldn’t generate skill Exp. It was vital for me to find new targets to scan, as I would rapidly run out of flatmates.

Whist I waited for my mana to recharge, I updated my calendar app, adding reminders for all the upcoming tests, quizzes, and assignments I knew about. Whilst I was at it, I added several reminders that would help me live my best life on campus in other ways, at least for the next few months.

‘Does using your prior knowledge to put yourself in the perfect position to get jumped by a super-hot girl **** for rebound sex make you a bad person? Maybe? Am I gonna do it, anyway? Yeaaaah…’

It was then, whilst I was in the middle of pondering this and other such moral quandaries, that the girls announced they were going to take the last half of our break to have a look through the nearby campus bookstore. Finished with everything else, I shrugged, then joined them.

Initially not enthused by the thought of overpriced textbooks, I still tagged along, simply happy to be spending more time with the girls. My attitude did a complete 180 as I ran out of new people to scan in the small store and instead shot off an Identify at a textbook.

Identify Successful!

Item name: Chemistry textbook.

Item type: Skillbook.

Item Description: A skillbook that allows you to gain skills at least tangentially related to the field of chemistry. With luck (and enough intelligence), it is possible to gain multiple skills through the use of this tome.

Brimming with excitement, I switched my attention over to a second window that had popped up alongside the first that went into greater detail about skillbooks worked. I was surprised to find that the way they worked wasn’t all that different from D&D and other similar tabletop style roll tables, system generated D100’s included.

From what I could gather, each time I absorbed a skillbook, I would get a single die to roll on a table of skills. For each threshold of my intelligence attribute I passed, I would get an additional dice to roll, the current total being two.

There was a cooldown after each book was used, starting at a day, but unfortunately doubling with every subsequent skillbook absorbed, no matter the type. To limit things even further, it appeared that each type of skillbook could only ever be used twice.

‘Eh, I guess if there were no limitations, I could order a bunch off of some internet retailer and go to town. In hindsight that is absolutely a good thing. The size of one’s wallet should not be a limiter on power, otherwise the world would be exclusively run by rich buggers. Waaaait a minute…’

Grumbling at the nature of the world but hopeful that things were now different, I closed the tooltip. Deciding not to be stingy with mana, I had a look around, scanning a few of the better looking textbooks as I went, practically drooling over some of the skills potentially up for grabs.

‘Oh, wooooooooow…’

Practically vibrating with excitement, I hurried from section to section, my arms soon full of textbooks. ‘Magic! There’s magic! Gunna be a wizard!’

‘Wait. How the hell does someone roll a decimal point on a D100?’ A little extra digging revealed that getting a roll of 100 on the last two tables would prompt me to roll an additional D10, on which only the 10 would earn me the big reward.

“Err, Casper, what are you doing?” Annie asked, amusement plain in her voice. When I turned to look, a sheepish expression in place, she and Sophie were standing in the middle of the store. From the size of the grins on their faces, they must’ve been watching me bounce around like an excited puppy for some time.

“I can see that you’re enthusiastic,” Sophie added, barely suppressing a giggle, “but you do realise only half those books are remotely relevant, right?”

“Errrrrrrm…” I eloquently replied, trying to come up a half decent excuse that allowed me to keep my gathered loot. As a biology student, I could easily get away with buying the biology and the anatomy books, but the other two?

A memory of an old friend in the year above who’d help me study for my A-level chemistry class came to mind. ‘She just so happens to be studying chemistry on the other side of the country now, right? Sorry Kate, looks like you’re being thrown under the bus for this one.’

“Well, the biology and anatomy books are for me. The chemistry book is a specific edition for an old friend who complained to me about their local shop being sold out recently. As for the Physics book...” I said, my voice trailing off as my brain scrambled for an excuse for the last textbook.

‘Maybe my little sister?’ I thought, only to pause in confusion. ‘Wait, I don’t have a little sister, so why am I suddenly so sure that I do?’

Because you do.

I blinked, surprised by the unprompted system message. Images of a short, bespectacled anime girl with ridiculously long white hair tied up in twin tails filled my mind, and I felt the uncanny certainty that this was, in fact, my sister.

‘Uh huh…’

I ruthlessly squashed the first thoughts that came to mind, feeling incredibly guilty where my brain went, only to pause as a second system message followed the first.

She is both 18 and adopted.

‘Well, that’s convenient...’

“The Physics book is for my little sister. She’s in the year below us, but is a self-made genius, despite what people have tried to pull to drag her down,” I said, feeling a swell of pride for my sister’s perseverant nature. This bit of system fuckery thoroughly wigged me out, as I’d never met the woman and thus shouldn’t know the first thing about her.

Quite willing to entertain any form of distraction, I played up my response to the Annie and Sophie’s gentle ribbing, bantering back and forth with them as we all headed back to class, my four prizes secured in my inventory.