Well Prepared is Half Done

With the inventory experiments concluded, John went back to his room to take a look at the Create Barrier options.

Empty Barrier
Creates a barrier with a radius of up to 6 meters (5+Skill Lvl) that mirrors the terrain, structures, non-magical objects and stationary vegetation of reality in the same radius.

That was pretty much as expected and not really interesting at the moment. Probably useful though, especially if he could duplicate items that way. However, that last exploit actually working seemed unlikely. In any case, the really interesting options were the special ones. John had only checked this one to be thorough.

Training Room
Creates a training room barrier outfitted with a variety of training dummies, obstacle courses and training equipment suited to your current stats and skills, as well as a sparring area. Creatures of level 8 or below (Level+Skill Lvl) have any damage they inflict inside the sparring area set to nonlethal.

That sounded potentially quite useful. Even if training dummies and such granted no EXP, as was usually the case for video games, it would still help him get a measure of his current abilities, test new gear if the best option wasn’t immediately obvious and so on.

A tooltip on Nonlethal Damage said that it couldn’t reduce the target to 0 HP, instead ejecting them from the sparring area if it would, and that all such damage would be healed upon leaving the sparring area.

Arena
Creates a barrier populated with hostile creatures based on the area the spell is used in, a spell component or a permanently unlocked option. When the barrier is cleared, EXP and loot is awarded and the option to start a 10 second timer to repopulation is enabled. Maximum tier accessible is based on Level. An option is permanently unlocked after it has been cleared once.

Score. This was exactly what he was looking for, and a bit more than that even. In all honesty, he hadn’t expected there to be loot from something he could put up himself. Maybe he should have, given that he had gotten money from the Quest to help his grandpa on top of the money grandpa gave him. That having happened still felt a bit too good to be true.

Instant Dungeon
Creates a barrier containing a dungeon, complete with one or more bosses and one or more quests. The dungeon theme is based on the area where the spell is used, a spell component or a permanently unlocked option. EXP and loot is awarded after each boss is slain. Enemy strength and numbers are dynamically scaled to party size and your level. An option is permanently unlocked after one dungeon of that theme has been cleared.

And score the second. IDs sounded like they would be lengthier affairs than Arenas, but they were probably more efficient when he did have the time, would be his guess. Maybe not in the EXP department, that was often fastest to get in some sort of waves of enemies setup.

Those setups were also sometimes better for grinding large amounts of low-rarity drops. Rare drops and good gear was usually the purview of running raids, killing bosses and completing quests. Well, in the case of good gear, crafting using rare material drops from said raids, bosses or quests was often an option too.

In any case, Arena sounded like the place to dip one’s toes. And ID sounded like it could take a while, so best save the first attempt at that for an occasion where he had a lot of time on his hands. Not one where he had spent half the time he had on other stuff.

Obviously, some sort of color coding was going on. Tooltips revealed that the absent black would mark permanently unlocked enemies, blue-gray indicated location based options and red was from a spell component.

The tooltip on the pseudodrakes option even helpfully listed the component as being a kobold scale. Which was a bit of a puzzler given that John didn’t have one of those on hand as far as he knew.

Checking his inventory didn’t offer any explanation at first, but after a few moments’ thought he realized that he still had his clothes from yesterday in there. Checking the pockets, he found a coppery scale like the ones on Qhila’s lower arms.

Wondering how it got there brought John’s mind back to the hug, and a warm feeling spread in his stomach. Not only had she kinda hugged back, but as best he could tell, he had helped her a little with whatever had made her upset. For a long moment, he simply sat like that. Then, his focus returned to the present, and he hit the scale with an Observe for good measure.

Kobold Scale
Common
This kobold scale was shed naturally. Kobold scales are generally regarded as waste, but can be used in place of more potent components for spells and alchemical processes that only need a very faint draconic connection.

So, not something he should be concerned about having come off her, nor something he needed to consider saving for later. Good. John was halfway through the menus to get started when he realized he was being an idiot. Again. Glancing at his buff tray and noting that the energy drink was gone, the reason was probably the same as his brain farts during school.

In any case, the thing he was being stupid about was, in a word, preparations. While he felt it justified to assume that a level scaled challenge was more manageable than the rat ogre, he had no reason to assume that failure would be any less deadly. A Hardcore mode wasn’t uncommon in games, after all, and the Training Room option had an explicitly nonlethal portion while no such assurances were made for Arena, or ID for that matter.

First things first, though, caffeine. There were no energy drinks in the house, and John wasn’t sure caffeinated soda would suffice, so Mom’s instant coffee it was. He liked that taste even less than the energy drink, but once again that wasn’t really the point.

Wakefulness sorted, John turned to the most glaringly stupid thing he had been about to do. Or rather, not do. Between the Level Up and Quest reward, he was sitting on 2 free Skill Levels and 7 Ability Points. And an INT-boosting Gold Star Sticker. Not applying those before going into battle could be a fatal mistake.

Assigning one of those Skill Levels was obvious: Leveling Biomancy would increase the cap on Enhance Muscle. Since it was sitting at full Skill EXP already, it Leveled Up as well the moment John made the selection.

The second Skill Level was less obvious to place. He considered putting it in Biomancy too, since it offered 5 up front HP and set the limit for 3 Skills at this point. But, it doing so for three Skills also made it comparatively easier to grind.

Low Alchemy on the other hand had only 1 Branch so far, and looking at his Skill EXP in it and Conjure IAF, he was going to run into the same problem here as he did with Biomancy and Enhance Muscle. Which in turn meant that at least until he had more ways to get Low Alchemy Skill EXP, free Skill Levels that weren’t needed elsewhere on the short term should go there.

In terms of Ability Scores, the fight with Frank had shown clearly that he couldn’t afford to stop shoring up his shortcomings there just yet. He still wanted to go for a more magic-focused build in the long run though, so letting WIS fall behind wasn’t an option either.

Putting 2 into each of STR, END and WIS would put all of them on par with AGI at 15 and left him with one point to spare. He felt that he could spare that one point for upping his CHA. He also applied the Gold Star Sticker to his Hat of Close Calls, raising his total INT to 27. Really should’ve done that when he got it.

The second part of what he had been about to be stupid on was gear. Beyond the sticker, that was. Sure, he had most of a set of armor, but that was about it. That he hadn’t been about to enter battle unarmed was entirely a happy accident of the bat still sitting in his inventory. Which he hadn’t been thinking of.

Resisting the urge to facepalm, John instead set about rectifying that state of affairs. Starting with putting some of his full mana bar into conjuring some more alchemist’s fire so he wasn’t wasting MP regen. He briefly considered scrapping the run now and just spending the time stocking up, since it was his strongest offensive option at the moment.

However, if he wanted that to be his main offense and lowball-estimated the size of a ‘wave’ of enemies to some single digit number, he would probably want about 10 vials’ worth of it. To account for the occasional miss.

Setting aside how to get 10 vials, just making the substance itself would take about 5 hours’ worth of mana regen. Which meant he might be ready to run a single wave from an entire afternoon of prep. Not good enough.

The bat was probably not a bad addition now that John’s STR wasn’t abysmal anymore. Still, games and forum discussions about weapons in tabletop RPGs both agreed that there was no weapon without weaknesses. With inventory slots to spare, he might as well bring a kitchen knife too.

On the topic of his offense and the question of where to get vials, his current delivery method for the alchemist’s fire wasn’t great. Since it was in a hard plastic bottle, he’d basically have to open it and try to splash it on his target. And hope he didn’t accidentally splash some on himself and that the stuff didn’t melt through the bottle first because it would ignite the moment he opened the bottle.

There probably were some glass bottles in the garage he could use, as long as he could find something to seal them with. Before he got to looking at that, though, another idea popped into his head. A few years ago, his mom gave him a water gun, and a pretty fancy one too, for his birthday. No doubt there’d been a hope that it’d lure him out of his room. It had been sitting unused in his closet ever since.

A quick test in the bathroom revealed that it was still fully functional. Which meant the obvious next question was if he could find something else useful to load it with. Between knowing that lots of cleaning stuff came with warning labels and the chemistry knowledge he had absorbed from a textbook yesterday, he was willing to bet that the answer was yes.

In terms of quick solutions, mixing bleach powder with significantly less water than recommended was the best one on hand. He wasn’t really expecting it to deal relevant damage, if any at all, but shooting it in something’s face should mess up its ability to see pretty badly for the short term.

However, between the various household chemicals he found, the chemistry knowledge he absorbed yesterday, and maybe a trip to a hardware store, he was practically spoiled for choice of toxic or corrosive stuff to shoot if he was willing to invest a bit of time in making it.

Somewhat concerningly, he also had at least a handful of different ways to make explosives, but he decided to steer clear of that. Even with Gamer’s Body he wasn’t keen on accidentally blowing his hand to smithereens by mishandling the stuff, and being put on a watchlist didn’t seem like a good idea either.

He had found everything he needed to make something explosive-adjacent that shouldn’t be an issue though: Molotov cocktails. Specifically a ‘sticky’ modification that he’d read in a forum story about a guy accidentally starting a forest fire. Of course, that might’ve been bogus, but hopefully Observe would warn him in that case. However, when he put the first one together, he got a notification.

Craft unlocked. Alchemist’s Fire (Conjured) added to recipes. Conjure Inferior Alchemist’s Fire removed from skill list. Skill EXP redistributed to Craft and Low Alchemy.

New Recipe: Sticky Molotov Cocktail

New Recipe: Concentrated Bleach Solution

‘Nice! But… why give me a temporary skill to conjure alchemist’s fire instead of just the craft skill up front?’

Gaia: And encourage your laziness by not even having you actually craft something to get the skill?

‘... Point taken.’

Poking around in his inventory revealed that the only thing with an Item Level displayed was the bottle of alchemist’s fire, at 1. Putting the molotov in there revealed it to have a level of 0. ‘Guess I only get item levels when I know the recipe…’

That aside, there were some shiny new options to take a look at.

Poking the Recipe list showed that Active Creating a molotov cost no MP, while alchemist’s fire went at the 1 MP per mL he knew from Conjure Inferior Alchemist’s Fire. Instant Creating came with an additional surcharge of 10 per molotov or per ‘batch’ of alchemist’s fire, before the Skill Level discount. Presumably, once his mana pool got big enough to afford it, the surcharge on the latter turned into 10 per 100 mL, rounded up.

Background Creating a molotov took 20 minutes and cost .5 MP/min. Alchemist’s fire could be set to anywhere between 20 minutes and 10 hours per 100 mL, ranging from 5.5 to .2 MP/min. The former came out to 10 MP per molotov, and the latter looked like it probably came out around 110 MP per 100 mL regardless of speed. Whether variable speed was the norm or not, and why only one of them got it, was unclear.

In any case, it also showed that molotovs lacked a Quality Factor, probably a general thing for Level 0 items, while alchemist’s fire had it applied to burn duration.

In any case, John set himself to Active Create another 4 molotovs, at which point his body started moving on its own. Triggering that kind of self-automation on purpose and from one moment to the next was a novel experience. The self-automation itself wasn’t all that different from how he’d spent a lot of his time over the years though, when zoning out or slipping into a daydream while doing something that required little to no actual thinking.

Since he could operate his menus by thought, he took the opportunity to check out the rest of the Craft options in the meanwhile.

Repair, Improve, Recycle and Reverse Engineer all mirrored the three modes of Create.

Repair and Improve only worked on items he knew the Recipe for, and restored durability and increased Quality Factor respectively. Repair also noted that if he used it on an item with a higher Quality Factor than he could’ve made it with, the QF would be reduced accordingly.

Recycle did work without a Recipe, just with a penalty to the recovered materials. It also worked on things his Skill Levels were too low for other Craft work with, once again with a penalty to the output for each one that was too small.

Reverse Engineer let him break down an item for a chance to learn its Recipe. That chance was 0 if his Skill Level in Craft and one other relevant Discipline Skill wasn’t at or above the item’s Item Level. Otherwise, it scaled with Skill Levels above the minimum and with his INT.

That concluded both checking the new skill and making the molotovs. He lit all five and put them in his inventory. Since that put them in stasis, it should be safe and would make it much faster and easier to put them to use under pressure. Then, he went out to the backyard to open the barrier.