Chapter 56

Chapter 56

I was breathing hard from the floor of the cavern where we had our little spar. For the first time ever [Judge Threat] had given me no indication of anything. Before I spent my free stat points it used to give me a sure death feeling when used on Hatchet but now it returned absolutely nothing. This was something that I was going to ask him about once I caught my breath.

Looking at my stat values I noticed that the ten minute fight at the end really took a lot out of me. My mana was sitting at 200/1690 and my stamina even lower at 30/1360. My health was very high in comparison at 750/1730. This clearly showed me that depending on the situation sometimes it was worth taking the hit instead of spreading the resources to dodge it.

I ran through the fight in my mind again. Thinking of how it started with a medium drain on my mana constantly running throughout using [Mana Syphon] to upgrade my physical stats. That alone counted for about 900 of the mana I had drained during the entire fight. The rest was split between my [Mana Augmentation] and [Mana Conjuration] with the former using close to 400 and the latter 200.

During the fight a few things were made painfully obvious to me by fighting a high level scout. First and foremost was how useless a lot of the elements I had access to were offensively against a high level scout. True, fire magma and ice could work decently defensively but someone on his level could easily outlast me if I decided to go that route.

What was effective was the combination of earth and water. The mud was clearly a problem for him to get through. Sadly it also posed the same challenges for me any time I entered the fray. Lightning on the other hand was both fast enough to make contact, damaging and even had the added benefit of limiting his speed and movement. This was definitely something that I would be looking to lean into in a speed match up. I would just have to make sure it doesn’t become a crutch that something immune to lightning would use to beat me.

With my stats evenly spread as they were, I found that I actually overpowered Hatchet quite a bit with the power boost from [Mana Syphon]. Considering that he was quite a bit faster than me this led me to believe that I had about the same total when considering only Strength Endurance and Dexterity. While it would take a bit more experimenting, I think I would stand a better chance against him if I was to increase the amount of mana I fed into [Mana Syphon].

The only downside being that I wouldn’t even be able to keep that up for ten minutes. If he caught on and just fought defensively he could most likely outlast me. He was also very likely going to be a lot more careful of my lightning in any other spar we were going to have.

“I have a question.” I rasped out after a few minutes of laying on the floor waiting for my stamina and mana to regenerate. “Why does my [Judge Threat] not give me any idea about you anymore?”

“That's because of my [Privacy] skill.” he answered.

“But it used to be responsive to you before I spent my stats.” I argued.

“Yes but all it told you then was that I could kill you anytime I want with little to no effort.” he said.” Now that the answer is a bit more ambiguous it falls within the bounds of my [Privacy] skill. As you level up [Judge Threat] to close the gap you will start to receive some information. Though most of it will be ambiguous at the start.”

The last gift came from Alana. He received a set of rather expensive clothes. Something he hadn’t owned before. It was a set of clothes that one would wear if they ever went to an event hosted by nobles. His relationship with Alana had progressed very strangely over the past few years. Their mutual interest in each other seemed to be genuine but it wasn’t more than physical.

The next time she and his sister had come back into town, she had gotten rather drunk and they had ended up sleeping together. This became a common occurrence thereafter with them trying at a relationship but quickly figuring out that they worked better as friends and continuing a friends with benefits relationship every time she returned to the village, much to the displeasure of Jonny who had somehow figured out what had happened.

As he woke up on the morning of his birthday he found himself with two more notifications. This was definitely odd since he had asked Hatchet if there was anything else that he should be on the lookout for about the end of his Apprentice Trait, so as to not miss out on any benefits. He quickly opened them and was pleasantly surprised by what he found.

Achievement : Physically Gifted

End Apprentice trait with more than 500 points in Physical stats.

Reward : [Berserker].

Achievement : Archmage hopeful

End Apprentice trait with more than 600 points in Mental stats.

Reward : [Mana Skin].

Looking at the two odd new skills he gained and their odd presentation in their message he slowly went from ecstatic to annoyed. His [Berserker] skill was an Uncommon skill whereas [Mana Skin] was a Rare skill. This led him to the conclusion that every 100 points would have pushed his reward up a tier. Had he spent all his points on his magical stats he would now be the proud owner of a Mythic skill.