Of Skill, Stats, and Self-Confidence

’Lettuce… tomato… onion… green pepper…’

John chanted his mother’s toppings over again in his head, making sure that he wasn’t mis-ordering her sub. He tapped away on his phone quickly, letting the familiar muscle memory take over. Once he was ready, he double checked that his mundane balance was sufficient, using the snazzy new Abyss Auction app that he’d gotten on his phone.

“There we go,” he muttered to himself, smiling, as he finished ordering. It felt good to finally be able to give a little bit back to his mother. ’Didn’t actually ask how the Order would get that scholarship to me either. Should I be expecting a letter in the mail or something?’

The Gamer shrugged that off, figuring that he could always ask when he next returned to Brighton Manor.

He stood with a sigh, almost reflexively tossing his phone down onto the couch before remembering that he should just keep it in his inventory. Scratching the back of his neck, John made his way upstairs to stretch out and think over his talent points. Despite the nap he’d already taken, the softness of his bed was still tremendously alluring, slowly trying to talk him into going back to sleep.

’If I go to sleep this early, I’m gonna wake up at midnight and completely krangle my sleep schedule,’ he thought, sitting down at his desk chair. ’Gotta buy myself a few more hours awake, at least. No more putting it off or anything, let’s figure out how I’m using my stats.’

Willing his mind to focus, The Gamer opened back up his character sheet, looking over his stats as they were - he had fifteen points left to allocate, given by the three levels he’d earned. It took him a moment to register that he was still looking at himself, given how different he now looked in the little preview image that popped up by his equipment slots.

“Hmm…” John murmured, checking to see which stat breakpoints he was near. *’So, if I assume that all my stats have breakpoints at twenty-five, like Intellect did, then I’m close to new upgrades both in Endurance and Wisdom… I can probably guess that Endurance’s breakpoint would improve my HP scaling, like INT improved my mana scaling.

’Wisdom might be a mana regen scaling upgrade, then?’ He leaned back, his chair squeaking slightly as he reclined. ’I should check my skills, too. My [Unawakened Eye] had a stat requirement on its upgrades, if I remember right.’

Mind moving now towards his skills and their upgrades, he willed his gem socket menu to appear alongside his most recent skill descriptions. His sockets and inventory were a total mess, given the events of the morning. He’d dropped, regained, lost, and created a number of gems and items, all in the span of a few hours.

’I need to reorganize.

Of the three intrinsic skill slots that he now had, two were full - one with [Unawakened Eye] and the other with [Lesser Earth Spike]. The other two sockets he had, one each provided by his staff and amulet, were both full, the first with [Lesser Air Burst] and the second with [Swirling Mirrorjade Barrier]. With [Lesser Frost Wall], [Jagged Earth Dome], and [Ice Surge] all gone, he actually almost had enough slots for the time being.

Carefully, he withdrew the pouch of skill gems from his inventory, retrieving the [Mana Shield] gem from within. He hadn’t really gotten to use the ability yet, since he’d been too caught up in the moment to ever remember to channel it. Still, it seemed quite powerful, and he wanted to check its upgrade possibilities. He did have one slot left for it, after all.

He whistled softly. ’I’d like all three of those, really. The raw conversion efficiency upgrade would be really nice right now, while my total is so comparably low, but, in the long term, it would be super nice to remove the regeneration penalty. Pain mitigation and healing seems evergreen, though I’d hope to improve the numbers eventually.

The Gamer allowed his mind to run through many of the possibilities that the upgrades he was presented with could offer him. While he was normally hesitant to spend points, that was because he always wanted to min-max his investments. He’d hate to commit to an ability, only to find that he rarely ever used it or that the upgrade he chose was too niche.

It seemed apparent almost immediately that [Mana Shield] was more or less completely excluded from those worries.

Taking damage was simply a reality of combat, and, barring him somehow finding a better defensive skill very soon, it only made sense to work on keeping himself alive.

’With three talent points to spend, I probably ought to take that first one, with the pain numbing, assuming I can trust myself to actually use it…’ John shook his head and decided to take the upgrade. ’I’ll learn to use it eventually, even if I just end up popping it before I start fighting.’

He spent the point, watching the gem shimmer with radiant mana, then nodded to himself before rooting around in the soft gem-keeper’s bag for the last two skill gems he had. The first he drew forth was the opulent reward gem for [Gamer’s Unity], its metal wrapping still almost surreally pristine. The Gamer smiled as he rolled it around in his fingers before having that happy expression wiped away as he realized that it simply wasn’t an option to socket.

He’d tried to replace [Lesser Earth Spike] with it, but wasn’t allowed to.

’Uh, well, I guess it tracks that a “Gamer’s” skill won’t socket as simply as the rest, since I can’t mess with Spirit and Body that way. I wonder why this one even has an independent gem then…’ Accepting another question to add to the ever-growing list, John returned to the bag, pulling out the blood drop-shaped gem - his newest skill - [Somatic Alchemy: Blood Transmutation].

’This thing is doing the worst job imaginable of making me think I should keep it around, you know that?’

His almighty benefactor had no response to that.

The Gamer hadn’t had much of a chance to look at it closely in Lord Brighton’s office. The gem was strikingly blood-red, formed into an impossibly perfect droplet, only sparingly adorned with gold around the edges. It was slightly warm to the touch, and seemed to grow more vibrantly red as he stared at it. He sat, mesmerized by it, for a moment, before blinking away the brilliant crimsons from his eyes and opening the skill’s details.

’That all tracks with how things went earlier, though I wonder if [Gamer’s Body] came back because this debuff timed out or if their healing magic could remove it. For that matter, if I lose a limb while it’s off, will it come back at the end?’ He shuddered at that thought, choosing to ignore that possibility for the time being. ’This is just an emergency option. Doesn’t have to be anything more than that.

’It’s really unfortunate that this “Red Mana” or whatever can’t be used for healing, but I suppose infinite resource loops are also bad for game balance.’

Though part of him wanted to move on, John did try to socket the [Blood Transmutation] gem in his one free slot, just to see what upgrade might be offered. Unfortunately, the slot flashed red when he tried, preventing him from doing so.

Locked - Spend 1000 total health to unlock socketing and upgrades.

’Jeez, a thousand?’ he thought, double checking that he’d read that correctly. ’I guess I’m not doing anything with that right now. It would take me days of burning health like I did today to even get close, and that’s assuming I can get myself healed back up between. Hard pass.’

John shook his head, not even considering trying to grind that challenge currently. As he prepared to move on, he remembered that even though he’d looked at the [Swirling Mirrorjade Barrier] gem when he’d first gotten it, he’d never had a chance to check on what upgrades it might have.

’I was a little busy at the time.’

“Alright, well, at least the first and third of those seem good,” he muttered, reading over the options. ’Honestly, I probably shouldn’t discount the middle option either. I might not want to fight alone when I can help it, but that doesn’t mean I’ll always be able to avoid it.’

The Gamer sighed, allowing yet more information and questions to settle upon his mind. He shook his head - too many things, too little time. Still, he’d only really needed to see if his new skill had any stat point requirements, which it didn’t. So far he’d only had two spells with any requirements - [Mend the Flesh] and [Unawakened Eye] - which were both powerful, but only the latter was really unique in any way.

’Are my other alchemical skills just weaker or less special for some reason?’ He shook his head, deciding that the question wasn’t really one that he could answer for now and didn’t matter in the short term.

Moving on from that thought, he took a moment to bring up the upgrades for both of the aforementioned spells to confirm what he might need for them.

’Well, I’m basically already at the requirement for Lay on Hands at this point, so that’s not a super big concern since I want to hit twenty-five for those stat milestones anyway.’ He leaned back, staring at the ceiling and imagining the numbers he was thinking about dancing along the popcorn white. ’Come to think of it, the cap for Lay on Hands is really low. Thirty health isn’t much at all, though I guess, in theory, even a single point of healing could save someone’s life. One is one more HP than zero, after all.’

John sighed, furrowing his brow at that conclusion. ’Or would that only apply to me, since I’m the game character? Hope not to have to find out.’

Scratching the back of his neck, he shifted around in the chair to get comfortable again, deciding that there were probably additional upgrades or evolutions that he would need for [Mend the Flesh] if he wanted to alleviate its cap. The Gamer wondered if part of the spell's limitations were because of the simplistic book he’d studied while unlocking it, though that was pure speculation on his part. With a shrug, he moved on to the other spell he’d wanted to remind himself of.

’So, I still don’t really know what either of these mean, but it’s clearly my most unique skill. I ought to try and work towards at least one of these goals,’ he thought, looking over the numbers and comparing to his character sheet. ’They overlap on thirty Wisdom, so I could put seven in there without question. That gets me the next breakpoint as well.

’I ought to also at least throw the one point into Endurance for its breakpoint, too.’

John mulled all those things over for a moment before committing to the points. Those both seemed extremely safe investments, and he was still left with seven more points to flex in the future once he had a better idea of where he needed to go. It also felt nice to cross two more stat point thresholds to get their bonuses, too.

Stat Breakpoint - END 25: Max HP Scaling increased (5 -> 7)

Stat Breakpoint - WIS 25: MP Regen Scaling increased (.04 -> .1)

’Very nice… That breaks two hundred health for me! Pretty nice to have more buffer there. The increase to regen is probably even more important though. Gives me much more of a margin if I have to cut it in half to use [Mana Shield].’

The Gamer stood, stretching, while he closed several of the windows he’d become surrounded by. He left himself staring only at his character sheet, with seven stat points remaining to allocate.

’I can probably hold off on those for now, if I want to be a little greedy. The only other breakpoint I’m close to would be in Libido, and there’s no way I’m putting points into that one any time soon. With all seven, I could just stretch to Charisma’s milestone as well, which might be nice…’

That thought brought his mind to Ela Grzmot, the blonde knight he’d spent so much of the last couple days with. The cute blonde knight. The cute blonde knight who shared so many of his interests. Who he’d shared laughs and near-**** experiences with already.

He just couldn’t shake away Gaia’s nagging teases as he thought about her.

John let himself fall back over, plopping onto his bed as he wandered through his thoughts. Throughout his life as a simple pervert, he’d been attracted to a lot of women. He’d seen countless pairs of amazing breasts, so many wonderful thighs, amazing booty of all kinds of shapes, yet, none of them had ever really mattered to him. They were all purely carnal pleasures.

Ela undeniably had all of that same physical appeal, but something about her was special, too. Much more so than any of the minor crushes he could recall in the years before he’d completely abandoned his social life.

He really was beginning to fall for her.

It was really strange to think that way about someone he’d known for but a few days, but it felt right.

’Maybe it is worth getting some more Charisma… just in case…’

I’m not sure any amount of Charisma will help if you don’t discover the meaning of the phrase “self-confidence.”

’With regards to women, what in the world would I have to be confident about?’

That mindset is literally the problem.

John didn’t really know how to respond to that. It couldn’t be as simple as someone just liking him for who he was right now, right? He sighed, rolling over on his bed to smush his face into his pillow.

’I guess I can just sit on the points until I decide if I’m going to do anything with them tomorrow morning.’

He rolled back over, nearly off his bed, deciding that he could actually take an evening to live up to his title and play some games. Those were always good to take his mind off other things. It had been a couple days since he’d logged in anyway, and he had to make sure he wasn’t falling down any leaderboards.

As he sat up and moved over towards his chair, he noticed that he had a new notification waiting for him.

’REALLY not going great on the whole, “this totally isn’t evil magic, please don’t smite me Lord Paladin Guy!”’ He was smiling, despite his quip. ’I guess this at least sounds more academic in the middle there. I wonder why this is what leads me to the fundamentals?’

He accepted the quest, letting a very plain metal band fall into his hands. It was so plain that he’d have almost mistaken it for junk metal if he couldn’t feel the mana thrumming beneath its surface. Turning it over a couple more times, he discovered a very tiny red gemstone pressed flat into one end.

’Well, I guess the ring doesn’t quite feed on my life ****, but it’s on thin ice. Is that question mark effect the thing where it grows as I use my [Blood Transmutation] or is that something else? Guess I’ll find out once I get some experience using it. Not like I have anything else worthwhile competing for a ring slot.’

John flicked the simplistic jewelry up, letting it spin through the air in front of him before catching it and storing it away in his inventory. With a few more taps through his menus, he set the ring up to equip with his combat set of gear. He didn’t want to have to explain to his mother where it came from by wearing it with his regular clothing.

With that settled, The Gamer waited for a moment, as if he expected another window or comment or something to suddenly pop up again. When nothing did, he finally allowed himself to turn around and pull his chair up to his desk, booting his computer up to relax in his favorite way, gaming.

Then, the doorbell rang.

’Ah heck, I forgot about the sandwiches.’