[NR] Looking Into System Nonsense - Chapter 569 (Patreon)

Though for Jason, this discovery of the use of concepts in the Wilderness Construction did more than just help there. It causes him to look at all of his current skills with a new eye. While he didn’t have many, at the very least, the Herb Farming skill likely used concepts in a similar manner. And so he took a day to explore the effects.

Of course, Energetic Body Reinforcement both did and did not have concepts in it. Or more properly, it had exactly Jason’s three concepts; [Civilization], [Ascendance], and [Substance]. Except he couldn’t use these to grow more because as a self-made skill, the skill was his own understanding of those concepts. An interesting find, for sure, but not useful for Jason at the moment.

Body Blast, in turn, suffered the same problem, except it had even less conceptual weight to it. And Energetic Poison and Venom Resistance wasn’t much better. Both basically created by Jason. Sure, the second one was based on a shared skill, but in the end, it was Jason’s suffering under the trainer’s poison that got him the skill and not knowledge being passed down.

Then Jason skipped ahead to check out War Stomp. It was chocked full of conceptual weight, sure, but not much of use to Jason. He had expected this as it was a skill passed on from his Teacher and she had clearly walked a different path from him. Though the skill did have hints of ascendance at the edges and the fact the skill got passed on meant some concepts of civilization were there.

That left Herb Farming. A few of the effects were straightforward. A good example of this is the Land Sense effect. If this was his last life, it would be classified as a specialized version of spirit sense or any of the infinite other names people have given the ability to sense things with their form of mystical power. The difference being that these effects are using the System to handle the processing. No worry about figuring out what your senses are actually telling you. The same sort of thing was in his newest skill where it determines where would be good to place a building or what have you.

This also revealed another weakness of the System. While fancy, the System should not have to do this. If the System was fully in control of NeoRealm, it could just use the information it already has to tell you what is around. The only catch here is that Jason figures he needs to test this outside of the Deep Wilds. Though the fact there is such a process means doing so likely won’t change anything. You don’t make such complex search algorithms unless you need to.

However, the two System nonsense effects that most benefited Jason were Growth Assist and the herb Specialty. The first was straightforward in a way such an effect shouldn’t be. It increases the growth of plants under your constant care by a flat ten percent. Though in that description, it reveals the secret.

That effect is actually more akin to a plant growth spell than it is a passive effect. Jason almost feels stupid for not realizing it when he first got the skill. The effect needs the plant to be under his Constant care! This was the System literally pumping the plant full of Energy to make it grow faster.

Then the specialty, a doubling of the farming skill on herbs? How did the System even categorize what was a herb? After all, his Energy herb was more commonly called blue weed. Any normal farmer with a similar effect wouldn’t want the “weeds” in his garden growing faster.

The answer was simple enough. The System used a person’s understanding of the concept of herbs. If a herb resonated with that concept, it meant the person would recognize the plant as a herb. In fact, as Jason dug deeper, this revealed how the System was measuring his concepts in the first place.

It was basically holding up his concepts against the System’s own understanding and slapping a percentage on it depending on how much resonated. Then the System simply uses that same resonance to measure how much it was changing a person and noting those effects down as well.

In fact, the deeper he looked into, the more things connected to it. For one, the entire bonus section of the character sheet was basically pre-existing effects a person had on the world based on their concepts. The System has simply measured those effects and noted them down.

More to the point, it explained the reason for splitting up discovery and knowledge bonuses. In the end, there wasn’t actually a difference. It was just that the discovery bonus represented a person’s deeper understanding of the concept involved.

As far as Jason could tell, the only reason the System even bothered noting this difference was to help growth. While it was entirely possible for a person to make up the deeper understanding that would have come from discovering something themselves. It was much easier to just start with the realization in the first place.

This was basically the difference between being told the stove is hot and actually touching said stove. You can later on internalize what the stove being hot means, maybe even by touching it, but you skip that all by touching it from the start. And when it comes to concepts, well, sometimes you just don’t have a hot stove around to touch.

One particular bonus, ironically attached to herbs, was the split up bonus of being able to identify the maturity of a herb. The knowledge bonus was to do so with a skill, while the discovery bonus was to get a feel for it, even without a skill. They seem almost identical besides the fact that one needs a skill to work.

Except that very much wasn’t the case. The knowledge bonus used hard words. You don’t identify when the tub has water that is warm enough. You identify the exact temp or at least a clear range. No, you feel if the water is warm enough, and that is what the discovery bonus was about. One would serve you well when growing a herb you know already. The other would allow you to have an educated guess when you find an unknown herb out in the wild.