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(MoD) Chapter 2: I Understand It Now
🕑 Added 2025-02-02 06:38:59 +0000 UTCChapter 2: I Understand It Now
Now that the barrage of notifications that were being thrown at him had come to an end, he could finally examine the values that he was seeing one by one—starting off with HP or "Hit Points," a statistic that didn't need much of an explanation. Simply put, it was his health, if it reached 0—it was game over.
Next was MP or "Mana Points", this is what he consumed each time he used a skill, the degree of which was decided by how long he used one for, and how high it's base cost was. For example, his Mana Sense skill seemed to consume one tick of MP at a time, something he'd need to keep careful track of if he tried to use it in conjunction with anything.
Before moving onto his statistics, there were three intriguing things the screen in front of them had displayed. His "Rank", "Elemental Affinity", and "Sub-Class."
[Rank: 1st Circle Magician (10/100).]
Upon looking at his stat sheet, he noticed that there were only two things with a value of 10, his Dexterity, and his Mana.
Dexterity—simply put, was one's agility, precision, and skill in which he completed a task. However, since his rank had the word "Magician" in it, it was pretty easy for him to come to the conclusion that it wasn't referring to his Dexterity, but rather his Mana.
Mana appears to be of particular importance, not only do I need to increase my rank—although I'm not exactly sure what that would do, I also need it to unlock this thing called a "Sub-Class." I should prioritize this before I work on anything else.
[Sub-Class: Reach 20 MANA to unlock.]
Then there was his Elemental Affinity, which he found particularly confusing.
[Elemental Affinity: Dark (Level 1).]
Even though it said Level 1, it didn't show him what value he needed to increase in order to level it up. One could assume that it was his Mana stat, which would certainly be the most logical assumption—but he didn't see the sense in the screen telling him exactly what he needed to upgrade one thing, but not the other.
The only other thing he understood about his elemental affinity was that it had an influence on his skills, since Mana Sense and Meditation were classified as "Neutral", whereas Blind and Shadow Step were classified as "Dark." It was obvious what it meant by being a Dark skill, and he could only presume that a Neutral skill didn't have an element.
Blind and Shadow Step scaled with his intelligence and speed respectively, on top of his element, which meant that he could still improve them for the time-being even without knowing how to increase the level of his affinity. However, finding out how to do the latter was certainly a top-priority—as it probably would make those skills exponentially stronger.
Speaking of skills, all the ones I awakened from the get-go scaled either from my speed or intelligence, which are currently my highest stats sitting at 22 and 24 respectively. I imagine reaching a threshold of at least 20 is what I need to awaken a skill for each stat.
His statistics already seemed to be attuned to him, which was something he hadn't even considered doubting seeing as it put his intelligence as the strongest point. A value which he firmly believed was at least double whatever Souna's was.
This is interesting—my intelligence stat appears to do more than just prove my superiority over her. He hummed, noticing that another description popped up on the screen if he touched any of the statistics.
[INT: Affects your rate of MP recovery, spatial awareness, your cognitive function, mental strength, and proficiency of skills that scale of INT.]
I'll probably unlock more skills related to it once I get this high enough, which shouldn't be a challenge for me of all people. He decided to click on each stat one by one, eager to see what they each represented according to the screen.
[STR: Affects your physical strength, determines the overall toughness of your body, and proficiency of skills that scale with STR.]
The training I do with Hairo is mostly just speed and stamina, so it makes sense why my strength isn't very high. As much as I hate it, I'm probably best off asking a muscle-freak like him for some help on how to increase this.
[VIT: Affects your overall HP, the density and amount of life force your body holds, and proficiency of skills that scale with VIT.]
Vitality was rather straightforward, 1 point in vitality translated to 10 HP. Which explained why his overall HP was already at 170, since he already had 17 VIT. Something that was also clearly a result of training with Hairo. However, Track & Field didn't appear to improve vitality as much as it did speed—another thing he'd probably need to seek advice from the freak of nature himself on how to improve.
What does it mean by "life force" though? By the way it's displaying it, it's suggesting that life force and HP are two separate things—maybe it's also something I'll end up understanding later on.
[DEX: A measure of your coordination ability, affects your accuracy and overall motor skills, and proficiency of skills that scale with DEX.]
Dexterity was his lowest stat alongside Mana, and he doubted a gorilla in human skin like Hairo would be very adept at such a thing.
Maybe Murayama would actually be able to help me out here? Kendo requires a lot of coordination doesn't it? She certainly owes me for all the cooking I've done for her, I think it's time for me to collect my interest.
[SPD: Affects your overall movement speed, and proficiency of abilities that scale with SPD.]
He planned on testing out his Shadow Step skill sometime soon, but trying out something that was supposed to help with movement inside his room, an enclosed space, probably wasn't the best idea. So it was probably better to go out to the backyard first before giving it a whirl.
He didn't want to be propelled head-first into his wall after all, the retribution he'd face from damaging his mother's wallpaper wasn't something even magic could save him from.
[MANA: Affects the density of Mana held within your Mana Core—which in turn determines the strength of your spells, and increases the amount of MP your Mana Core is capable of holding at any given time, as well as the proficiency of skills that scale with MANA.]
That term—"Mana Core". He clutched his stomach, remembering the knot-like sensation he had felt stirring in his intestine when he first accepted the screen's prompt to awaken his Mana Core.
There was something inside him now, he had sensed it when he activated Mana Core a short while ago, an organ that wasn't there before—an extension of him that had only just been born. The same organ that had collected something from the atmosphere in order to restore his MP once he deactivated Mana Sense.
The Meditation skill is supposed to affect my Mana Core, so maybe using that would help me learn more about what's happened to me. However, there's something I want to do beforehand.
He pulled his chair closer to his desk, taking out a blank notebook and a pen, writing down one of the equations that had been crammed into his head when he was awakening his four skills—the equation that was supposed to be related to Shadow Step.
I knew it! This is Newton's second law of motion—the equation for momentum, an object's mass multiplied by its velocity.
But upon closer inspection, he noticed that something was off. There were two unknown variables included in the equation, neither of which he had ever seen in any textbook before.
Let's think here, this obviously can't just be the normal equation for momentum since it involves "magic", or at least what I assume is magic. He tapped his chin, flawlessly spinning his pen while he fell deep into thought.
Mana? It has to be Mana right? The equation is using one unknown variable to help compensate for the mass, aka myself. Which you can't just do out of nowhere with the level of physics we have now, so Mana has to be what's doing it instead.
[+1 INT (24 -> 25).]
A notification appeared in front of him, declaring that he gained an intelligence point out of nowhere.
It gave me a point? I see, that must be because I comprehend it correctly. The skill Shadow Step, is a modified version of Newton's law designed to include Mana. I have four equations in my head for four different skills right now, so the more I comprehend them, the more "intelligence" I should gain—which isn't limited to just learning basic "human" topics.
He didn't know whether other people had the same screen as him, or could access the same abilities—but he didn't want to disregard the possibility that he wasn't the only "special" person around.
But that was a worry for another day, right now he had to focus on the one thing that had been made evident to him. The screen didn't just want him to use the skills, it wanted him to understand them. To understand the process of how those skills actually operated in the first place.
I still haven't fully understood this equation, the "Mana" is multiplied by something and changed into a different value throughout the equation—and I don't know what that something could be.
He stood up, closing his notebook and putting it into his desk drawer. It's time for a little bit of field experimentation, he used Mana Sense one more time just to confirm that Murayama was asleep before going to the backyard.
He took a deep breath and started to stretch his legs, albeit in a sluggish manner as they were still sore from the training he had done with Hairo.
Here goes nothing—Shadow Step!
A black runic circle appeared in front of him, the radius of which was just about wide enough for him to fit both his feet. Alright, I should be able to choose which direction I want to move in according to the skill's description. So let's go with forward.
The runes started to adjust themselves, as if responding to his command.
Whoosh!
Upon stepping on the circle, Takauji found himself instantaneously being propelled forward at a speed he had never even thought of being achievable before—like the heels of his feet had grown wings for a brief moment.
[MP: 90/100]
The cost of a single activation was 10 MP, which allowed him to use 10 successive deployments of Shadow Step before his Mana Core ran out of MP.
Unbelievable, I traveled almost 2 meters in a split second. And then something clicked for him, the equation he had just studied for Shadow Step popping into his mind. I have 22 Speed, so maybe it's possible that it has some correlation to the distance I traveled? Maybe the exact distance I traveled was 2.2 meters?
[+1 INT (25 -> 26).]
Haha! I see! The amount of distance Shadow Step travels is my SPD/10 converted into meters—these skills all have equations tied into them, so most, if not all of the relationships between my statistics and their performance should be calculable.
It's strange though, I didn't expect "magic" of all things to be tied into mathematics and equations to such a large extent. The magic you see in fantasy stories are normally more "mysterious", in nature. But I can actually grasp all these abilities with textbook knowledge. They're grounded in reality, but include "Mana" as an energy source, which I imagine people can't usually access.
Are all the magical abilities I'll obtain composed from existing equations? Is that what the "magic" I've obtained is? An extension of calculations that we can already grasp?
[+3 INT (26 -> 29).]
As it would seem, not every bit of comprehension he obtained offered the same increase in intelligence. The more intrinsic and depth his comprehension had, the more intelligence it would offer.
Which probably meant studying more advanced skills that he'd probably obtain later on, would end up increasing his intelligence exponentially.
He grinned, chuckling to himself as his desire to delve even deeper into the skills he had awakened surged, his calculative mind finally deeming something just as important as proving its dominance over the Student President.
In that case, let's keep going.
He still needed to figure out what the missing piece in fully comprehending Shadow Step's equation was—what it was that altered his Mana during the sequence.
Even though he experienced the sensation of Mana being expelled from his "Core" both when he activated Mana Sense and Shadow Step, there was a faint disparity that had come to his attention. He wasn't sure how to describe it, but the property of the Mana between those spells definitely weren't the same.
I think I know what I'm missing, in the description of the skills—Mana Sense was stated to be a Neutral skill, whereas Shadow Step was supposed to be a Dark skill. If his assumption about that being a result of one using his elemental affinity, and the other not—then there was only one conclusion he could make.
The Neutral Mana is turned into Dark Mana during the equation, that has to be the difference.
[+2 INT (29 -> 31).]
[Skill Awakened! — (Dark) Shapeshift; scales with INT, MANA, and Elemental Affinity. Transform into creatures/people, the consumption rate of MP while the ability is activated is dependent on the complexity of the transformation, and the quality of the transformation is also affected by INT.]
Shapeshift? That's certainly a strange one—however, I can envision its utility, so I'm not complaining. He scratched his temple, noticing something as he glossed over his small arsenal of skills.
He didn't have any outright attacking skills, which he assumed was because his Strength and Mana wasn't high enough—after all, the skills that scale of Intelligence all seemed to be utility-type skills, and the skill he had gotten from his Speed was obviously for mobility.
But he'd save testing it out for later, right now he wanted to see what he could achieve through using his Meditation skill, and how long it would take for him to reach the 20 Mana prerequisite needed to unlock his Sub-Class.
━━━━
Takauji's just starting to explore his system, and it the laws of which it functions on. Starting off by figuring out how to increase his Intelligence stat, and unlocking a new skill from it as well!
I look forward to hearing your suggestions for the story, and what you think is going to happen from this point onward!
