[NR] The First Title? - Chapter 570 (Patreon)

Jason frowns, there was one other difference between discovery and knowledge bonuses. The discovery bonuses were more general, which meant more powerful. His very first double bonus is a good example of this. The knowledge bonus gave two percent using Energy Herbs as an ingredient or growing them. While the discovery bonus did almost exactly the same thing, except instead of applying to using them as an ingredient, it was just using the herb, period.

In fact, the bonuses for World Herb, previously known as gloom weed, had the same difference between discovery and knowledge. Not that Jason had expected anything else. There were only so many ways to handle that sort of thing. If anything, he was surprised that they didn’t collapse down into a collected bonus.

Though there was one problem, well, frustration would be a better term. Jason had been going down this rabbit hole to find the parts of his status that the System was doing and he could replicate himself. This was somewhat to remove his reliance on the System and mostly so he could “cheat” by doing it better himself.

Except, so far, most of the things in his status aren’t actually being done by the System. Rather, it seemed the System’s principal job with the status panel was translating what was already there into hard numbers. Sure, it evened some things out and the skills had a couple places. For the most part, though, the system wasn’t needed.

The caveat to this being that Jason didn’t need the System. Everyone else still uses it for stuff like stats. Though knowledge and discovery aren’t the only things under bonuses. There are also the bottleneck bonuses and titles.

The first there was a little hard to figure out. Jason currently only had two and they weren’t the most active of abilities. One he didn’t want to have to test ever would help bring Lily back to life if she ever passed. The other slowly gathered power from the land to infuse into his portal planter. You would think that the second one would be easy enough to handle, except the effect is very subtle. If it was pulling in power, it either wasn’t the sort he could currently detect or in amounts so small he couldn’t spot it.

Titles, on the other hand, were a mixed bag. There was the familiar specialized spirit sense that detects how suitable a place was to cultivate. Some simply noted achievements such as his cultivator title. However, the one that drew Jason’s attention the most was the assassin title.

While it took Jason a bit of work to set up a test, the results were eye opening. To him, it had always represented the System restricting people from punching too far above their weight. And to be fair, it still partially was. On top of that, though, it seemed that some of how the assassination protection worked was actually an innate part of life in NeoRealm.

Yes, the System clearly could and would mess around with it to make things easier or harder. It is simply that a creature’s power will naturally rise up to defend against attacks. An interesting part of this is that the power that rises up isn’t the power within a beings pool. Rather, the power that has woven itself into the being’s body and self.

What the System does is play around with when it happens and can add in extra power to boost the defense. This is where the assassin title comes into play. While Jason can’t be certain, it seems that the System is activating the response even if it wouldn’t normally do so. In particular, an assassin title seems to define what the System will interfere with.

That should mean that with his current title, the System would activate an enemy’s defenses unless they are specifically unaware of Jason at all. However, as Lily’s title shows, there are many ways in which you should be able to bypass the reaction. Nevermind the fact the System was likely already enhancing this reaction when Jason is attacking.

It had been a while ago, but Jason definitely hadn’t forgotten that the System specifically targeted him and tried to nerf his ability to fight higher level foes. Except he also had a title that eventually could point towards a way around. Willful Survivor, one of his first titles, if not the first. He couldn’t quite remember at this point and a few of his other titles had gotten consolidated so the list ordering wasn’t guaranteed to be right.

Whatever the case may be, this title specifically called out the fact it would allow him to affect the System with his will alone. Well, it says it will increase his ability, which points towards everyone already having said ability. It just must not be that big for most people.

Either way, Jason felt that title could lead towards defeating the System’s restrictions and to keep ahead of the pack. It wasn’t going to happen anytime soon though. So his first order of business was to get experience with this odd title’s effect. After all, why would the System call attention to the fact that he could do this?

Yes, by now it was obvious to Jason that the System wasn’t actually giving people their titles, at least for the most part. Sure, some of the more descriptive titles might be purely System sources, but others clearly were not and especially not this one. Yet what would make the System reveal a title like Willful Survivor which was only downsides for it?

If this was any other game, Jason would swear he found an instance where a dev had left some sort of debug feature activated. After all, it very much felt like that. Let someone affect how the System works? Seems perfect for a dev who wanted to test out certain scenarios.

Except that certainly wasn’t the case here. Maybe at one point when NeoRealm hadn’t been realized, devs would poke around. Once the System was in place, though? There would have been no admin or dev accounts to speak of.