Chapter 213: Recourse

Chapter 213: Recourse

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Recourse

I took several slow breaths, calming and centering myself. Given what I knew was ahead of me, I wasn't even pretending to pay attention to the teacher's voice, not that I ever didas per usual, I had more important things to do.

Truthfully, I'd heavily considered blowing off classes altogether to continue grinding, but several things had stopped me. The first and simplest was the simple fact that I didn't want to draw too much attention from Cinder. While it wasn't uncommon for a student to blow off classes and I could easily come up with an excuse or make them up, that was only in normal cases.

Needless to say, normal I was notand now Cinder knew it. While I didn't regret 'outing' myself as Keter, seeing as the only real alternative had been a horrific death, the fact remained that it was a choice I was going to have to live with. Even though she didn't know the details, Cinder was now well aware that I was important and was actively keeping an eye on me, which meant that she and her minions were watching me like hawks whenever the opportunity presented itself, often in the form of spending more time with me.

To an outside party, it must have seemed like our team had come together. While it wasn't anything majorat least, as far as the rest of the school knewteam JAME had become well known for its fractured nature. We hadn't really hung out without another when we hadn't needed to, after all, which teams were generally expected to do; Emerald and Mercury spent time with Cinder or doing other minion things, while Adam and I didwhatever I happened to feel like on a given day, before promptly vanishing off to parts unknown.

Now though, Emerald and Mercury had decided to spend more time with us whenever the opportunity presented itself, sitting with us at lunch or following us around after classes. Seeing as we were a team, that type of behavior was all but expected, but it was pretty damn obvious they were doing it because Cinder had told them to.

Sadly, it wasn't something easily resolved, eitheror rather, any short term solutions were practically bound to cause long term problems. I could shake Emerald and Mercury easily enough, fool them with an illusion, or even just hospitalize them for a while, but that wouldn't truly solve anything. It would have been easy to do, but if I wanted to go do anything useful, it was bound to be seen through. If I disappeared, they'd know; I couldn't maintain my illusions while in another dimension, so training with Naraka was out, and while I could create the illusions at long range was simple for me, it wasn't something I could do from another continent. Even across the city would be a little tough, simply because I'd need to constantly monitor it. And while beating them up was not without its perksthe entertainment value, for instance, along with the peace and quietit would send alarm bells ringing for just about everyone.

Whatever I did, word was bound to get back to Cinder in short order, and I suspected her reaction to the sudden disappearance of her greatest enemy would bewell, something I didn't want to deal with. While she couldn't know I knew who she was, she probably suspected it, and even my nightly disappearances had begun to worry her. I'd been playing it off as if nothing had changed, but that meant sticking to the routine.

It was a pain in the ass, but frankly, I'd rather face Gilgamesh than Cinder and beating the former to come back to the latter wouldn't exactly improve my position. I'd just have to keep pushing ahead as if nothing had changed and hope she didn't have a way of figuring out what I was up to.

The other reason was equally simplenamely, meditation was useful, in its own way. My rate of growth had slowed as quickly as I had anticipated, which meant that there was a definite limit to how much I could improve before we reached Jericho Falls, unless we ventured significantly deeper into the continent of Grimm. While that was, of course, tempting, I had to bear in mind that the dangers would also increase and not necessarily at the same rate as my power. There were risks to going too far into that place and I had to measure them carefully against the rewards.

In my current state, I could essentially measure the improvement to my stats in batches of fifty pointsthat is, I needed to gain ten levels to reach the next benchmark. While in a certain sense any improvement was important, I had to consider the amount of time required to make proper gains. Although raising a stat from 100 to 105 would indeed make me better in whatever way I chose, it would be a fairly minor improvement on the level I was currently operating at; even fifty points may not be enough to make dividends. I needed the skills tied to my stats if I wanted to make a difference.

I had to keep that in mind. Currently, I only needed seven more levels to reach the next benchmark, but I'd need seventeen to reach the one after thatand if I only got sixteen in the next week, then the time needed to get nine of them would be wasted. Well, maybe not quite; there was a fairly high possibility I'd level up fighting the enemies at Jericho Falls, after all. But the general idea remained. I needed to manage my time wisely and leveling up posed issues, long term.

Not right now, of course. Even if killing an enemy with a level in the high one hundreds wasn't enough to gain me a level on its own any more, I could always just kill several. It was just that with each level, the number I'd need to kill wouldn't itself rise, or else I would need to defeat stronger enemies and venture deeper into the badlands.

That wouldn't be a major issueif not for the fact that my offensive ability was no long prone to making sudden absurd leaps at each benchmark. Before, I'd focused on INT and WIS, the skills most directly tied to the strength of my MP and the skills that required it. INT especially was the skill that determined the natural power of most of my skills, even before accounting for the skills I'd gotten for raising it. In addition to improving the amount of MP I had and how quickly I regenerated it, my INT and WIS skills had opened up a plethora of options for me at each benchmark, and with every ten levels, my power effectively skyrocketed. I learned to bypass charge times, improved the strength and versatility of my Elementals, and answered a wide variety of problems. Truthfully, my INT and WIS had determined my ability to deal damage far more than my Strength.

And now they'd both reached their effective peak. Now, it was time to focus on my physical stats which, of course, had uses of their own. Strength would improve the damage of any of my physical attacks, which I'd be able to further bolster with my various skills. Dexterity would allow me to both attack and move faster, which was something I'd long relied on. And Vitality, of course, would make me harder to kill. All of those things were useful.

Just not as useful as INT and WIS had been. With each of those, I could attack, defend, heal, move, and more, all based on a single statand I could do things that were impossible to accomplish with the body alone. They weren't amazing because they gave me the keys to ultimate power, though one could argue they'd done that as well; rather, they'd given me broad arrays of very useful options. While all my physical stats were also important and, in time, I was sure they'd reach amazing heightsat their current level, my gains were bound to be relatively marginal. I could punch people harderbut I could already blow up cities. I could attack fasterwhen I could make a legion of Psychokinetic spheres that poured out death at the slightest thought. I could grow tougherwhen I'd already made my skin the strongest material in the world.

The improvements were still important and they'd grow with time, but I couldn't rely on sudden extreme increases in power now. If I ventured too far into the lands of Grimm, it was quite possible I'd bite off more than I could chew, because I wasn't making a massive leap forward at regular intervals; instead, I had to rely on relatively slower paths to power, namely my skills. When they ranked up or I combined them, that also gave me strengthbut that also took time.

Time. The one thing I was actually running out of.

As such, taking the skill that directly improved my odds of survival and supplemented my strengths was the obvious choice. The best choice, or so I sincerely hoped. But if nothing else, it was the only acceptable choice, because I'd actually die before I left my friends behind to run away alone.

In the end, it was my choice to make and I did.

By raising VIT above 150, you have gained two random abilities related to your exalted physical condition.

The skill 'Determination' was created.

The skill 'Sufferance' was created.

By raising VIT above 150, you have gained the passive skill 'Qigong.'

By raising VIT above 150, you have gained the passive skill 'Solipsism.'

By raising VIT above 150, you have gained the passive skill 'Inerrant.'

The moment I'd made my choice, I'd felt energylifeflow through me; the result of such a sudden increase in Vitality, rather than the gradual improvements I was more accustomed to. It ran a circuit through my body, shimmering through my blood and bones. I felt my body grow stronger, healthier, and better, all at once.

And that was even before taking into account the skills I had learned. One in particular, I was quick to put to good use.

Qigong (Active & Passive) LV1 EXP: 0.00%

Within all living things flows the power of lifethe Aura of one's Soul. A spiritual existence that protects and reinforces the user, it has been the guarding light of Mankind since time immemorial. Throughout the millennia, Man has cultivated countless ways to draw closer to this light and strengthen themselves. One such method is to draw in that light and gather it within the body, connecting one's spirit more closely to their physical body. This skill represents a natural talent for that technique, born from the natural meridians within the user's body that carve out a complex pathway of channels and vessels that ease the flow of energy between body and soul, allowing for an unusual form of physical and spiritual.

Health (HP) can be improved through meditation.

Stamina can be improved through meditation.

Strength can be improved through meditation.

Dexterity can be improved through meditation.

Vitality can be improved through meditation.

Stamina may be consumed to temporarily increase the power of one's physical abilities.

And so, I passed the school day in contemplative silence, true form hidden beneath an illusion as I trained.