Chương 8: Chapter 7 - Upgrade Stats

"Hey!" Dustin said as he drew near.

"That was some show." Kiara just shrugged, then turned to keep walking towards the inn as she replied, "I don't like bullies." Dustin fell into step beside her and nodded.

"Me either, but I've never had the courage to stand up to one." He glanced sideways at her.

"I guess it helps that you're a mage, and can hold your own against bullies like him." Kiara didn't say anything back, just stared at the ground and kept walking. Dustin didn't seem bothered by the lack of response.

"I wanted to say thanks," he continued after a moment, still smiling at her. He handed her some coins.

"Benji dropped more than he owed me back there, so I guess these are yours." Kiara stopped walking and turned to face Dustin. She looked at the coins in his hand for a moment, then shook her head.

"I don't want those. They aren't mine." Dustin gave her a weird look.

"Sure they are, Benji gave them to you back at the pub." She sighed.

"No he didn't, he just dumped his pockets out and ran. I'm not interested in any ill-begotten coins like that. You never know when something like that might come back to bite you in the butt." Dustin gave her a curious look for a moment, then pocketed the coins. She started walking off, but he fell into step beside her again.

"Fair enough," he said, "I'll give them to the barkeep then, just in case Benji comes back looking for them." She glanced sideways at him, then pointed over her shoulder with her thumb.

"The barkeep is back that way…" Dustin just smiled goofily at her and said, "Ya, I know."

"So why are you following me?" She asked.

"I'm not!" He said with a joking offended look on his face.

"I'm simply keeping you company for a bit. Where are we headed?" She sighed again. Apparently he wasn't going to let her disappear into the city like she'd hoped. She really didn't want to gain any kind of fame or notoriety for what had just happened.

"The bar maid back at the pub told me about an inn up here," she admitted.

"I'm going to get a place to stay the night. And I need to find a map." Dustin nodded sagely from her side.

"A map… I see. For that, you'll want to try the cartographer's office." She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Oh? I didn't realize there even was one of those. Where is it?" He smiled slyly at her.

"I can show you! It's on the other side of the city though, it'll probably take a bit to walk there." She rolled her eyes at his persistence, but didn't say no. She would be happy to have someone show her the way to her map. When they got to the inn, she purchased a room for the night, which cost her 8 bronzes. She was taken aback by the price, it seemed expensive to her, but Dustin didn't seem to think it was anything outrageous.

Plus the bar maid had warned her that the rooms were a bit more expensive in this area of the city.

"Weren't you going to give the barkeep back that money?" She asked Dustin once she had her room key. He shrugged.

"I can do that later. Don't you want me to show you the way to the cartographer's office?" She glanced at the stairway up to the rooms. She really wanted some time alone to look through her [Upgrade Stats] reward.

"I need some time to decompress in my room," she said, turning back to Dustin.

"Why don't you go do that real quick, then come back and find me here. I'll wait for you in my room."

"You'll wait for me in your room?" he asked with one eyebrow raised.

"Hey now, we don't know each other that well." She smacked him on the arm.

"Not like that, you perv. Just come knock on my door once you're back." He just laughed and nodded, then turned to leave. Kiara headed up the stairs to her room, locking the door behind her after she entered. She collapsed on the bed and enjoyed being away from the noise of the city street for a moment. She had grown up in a small village, and wasn't used to all the noise and movement. It felt nice to just be alone on the bed for a moment. Eventually, she pulled up her [Upgrade Stats] reward.

[Upgrade Stats] cost: 0 points. You have +135 unspent Stats points. As Kiara selected the [Upgrade Stats] reward, a new page opened up, showing her current stats, along with her unspent upgrade points. Unspent Points: +135 Strength: 20 (Suggested +50) Mind: 50 (Suggested +0) Endurance: 30 (Suggested +40) Healing: 15 (Suggested +25) Sleep Fatigue Resistance: 15 (Suggested +5) Food / nourishment requirement: 15 (Suggested +5) Durability: 10 (Suggested +0) Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road.

Report any occurrences. Life Expectancy: 60 (Suggested +10) She wondered what the suggestions were for, and how the World Engine had landed on those numbers specifically. She had a pretty good idea what some of the stats were, but only a guess as to what some of the other ones might mean. As an experiment, she tried putting a single point into her life expectancy, and sure enough it bumped it up to 61. She then tried to undo the action, but it seemed to be locked in. She had 134 points left to spend.

She couldn't help but be drawn to the Mind stat. Would that make her smarter? She put a single point into it, but didn't feel much different. She still wondered about it though. She had always been drawn to learning, and valued her intelligence. The recent example of Dustin outsmarting the other players at Royal Bluff helped her make up her mind. She wanted to be smarter. She bumped up the Mind stat to 60, and immediately noticed a difference.

She was able to process information at an increased speed, and things that had seemed difficult before suddenly seemed slightly easier. Almost at once she thought back to the Royal Bluff game, and realized that the first two rounds were indeed information gathering rounds. It gave each player a chance to read their opponents, and notice their tells. Especially after a few hands, those first two times around the table became more and more valuable, and you learned more about the people you were playing with.

Ecstatic, she bumped the stat up to 70, and once again felt the increase. The noises coming from down below became more crisp and clear, as her mind was able to discern them more effectively. Things that her brain once filtered out as 'noise' were now brought into focus, and she had an easier time understanding the inputs her five senses were giving her. She bumped it up to 80, then 90, then 100, each time experiencing a noticeable difference in her ability to process information.

It seemed that she was now twice as capable of noticing patterns and understanding new information. Twice as capable of processing information and making decisions. It felt amazing! When the stat reached 100, she noticed that it was maxed out.

Unspent Points: +84 Strength: 20 (Suggested +50) Mind: 100 (MAX) Endurance: 30 (Suggested +40) Healing: 15 (Suggested +25) Sleep Fatigue Resistance: 15 (Suggested +5) Food / nourishment requirement: 15 (Suggested +5) Durability: 10 (Suggested +0) Life Expectancy: 61 (Suggested +10) Well, all good things must come to an end. With her increased mental capacity, she now considered the other options.

She wasn't sure what her long term goals were, other than getting home and helping her family get out of Lord Grivalt's clutches. At least she assumed they were in his clutches, as that was the last thing she'd heard him say he would do. What stats would help her in that regard? Lord Grivalt was a tier 2 mage, but she knew his magic wouldn't affect her at all. What else would she need?

She assumed that he would also have some kind of stat increases as he leveled up, which meant that he was probably stronger than her. So even without his magic, would she be able to protect herself if he attacked her again? What if he had his guards attack her? She assumed that she would need to be stronger physically. Endurance would be good if she was ever in an extended fight, or for walking long distances even. How far from home was she? Would she have to travel far to get back? Endurance might come in handy.

Speaking of protecting herself, she needed to learn how to fight, how to defend herself. She idly wondered if she should take up sword lessons or something. If so, she would need to practice to get better. Needing less sleep would allow her more time each day to practice anything she wanted, or to get stuff done. Now that she had money, she wasn't worried about providing for herself, so she could just stock up on food. But what if she ran out? Or what if it went bad before she could eat it all?

Less reliance on food would certainly be convenient. Having increased healing would be nice if she got injured or sick, but she figured it was better to learn how to fight and keep from getting injured in the first place. And she didn't really care about her life expectancy, honestly. 61 was a long way off, as Shian's body was only 24. She figured she would get more Stats upgrade points each time she leveled up, so for now she wanted to focus on things that would help her in her immediate situation.

She was glad she had maxed out her mind stat, that seemed like it would come in handy immediately as she decided where to go from here and how to get there. She decided to follow some of the suggestions, and put 5 points into each of Sleep fatigue resistance and Food / nourishment requirement. She maybe felt slightly less fatigued afterward, but she hadn't been all that tired to begin with, so it didn't affect her too much.

Then, she put 10 points into Durability, 10 points into Endurance, and the rest into Strength. Unspent Points: 0 Strength: 74 Mind: 100 (MAX) Endurance: 40 Healing: 15 Sleep Fatigue Resistance: 20 Food / nourishment requirement: 20 Durability: 20 Life Expectancy: 61 She felt the Strength stat kick in immediately, and felt a huge surge of power course through her body. It felt incredible! Standing up off the bed, she could barely control her motions, and jumped without meaning to, just from standing up.

Her head hit the ceiling. The extra points in Durability were already pulling their weight too, as the bump on the ceiling didn't hurt as much as she expected. She took some time to walk laps around the room to try and get used to her newfound strength. At first, she bumbled around, almost like a toddler, and had a hard time keeping her balance. Each movement had so much more energy behind it than she was used to.

She adjusted quickly though, and after a few minutes she could move and act normally without causing a scene. Once she felt like she had the hang of it, she sat back on the bed. Then, out of curiosity, she checked her reward options again. Reward Points: 2 [Upgrade Stats (tier-based)] cost: 1 point. Gain +135 points to spend on stats [Guaranteed Advancement] cost: 1 point. The normal advancement times for each tier of your class will be capped at 1 year. Advancements that happen before that are unaffected.

[Stat Checker] cost: 1 point. Gain the ability to view other people's stats. [Limit Breaker] cost: 1 point. Gain the ability to upgrade your stats up to double their original MAX value. [Soul Space 2] cost: 1 point. Your soul can function as a spatial storage device, accessible only by you. The space itself will be spherical, with a diameter of 10 feet. Anything placed in the soul space will enter a time stasis. As a bonus, this space can serve as a coin denomination exchanger for a 5% fee.