Imperious, Chapter 009 - Shopping, Stats, and Spells (Patreon)

Anna walked out the door, her cudgel slung over her shoulder. She scanned the street, empty as before with only the remains of the skeletons scattered in front of her door. I should probably do something about those, she thought as she walked over to one of them. She stopped next to the pile of bones and noted the axe sitting next to it. It was the same as the first two she’d come across while defending herself the previous day. She frowned and knelt down, wrapping her fingers around the handle and getting ready to pull.

Instead, she was treated to a perfectly good view of a blue sky as she fell backwards onto her ass, the axe in her hand. She puffed her cheeks up in a pout and just stared up as Pixel floated over to her and hovered over her head. “Miss Anna?” It asked hesitantly.

Anna glowered, “Don’t say a word,” She grumbled.

“I’m merely-” Pixel tried.

“Don’t, just don’t,” She grunted and lifted the axe up to identify it.

Wretched Axe (Inferior-Grade)
A heavy, poorly made axe wielded by the disposable foot soldiers of the undead legions.
Strength Requirement: 10

She blinked, “Ah,” She mumbled and got to her feet, tossing the axe irritably to the ground and stepping over it without a word, trying to ignore the heat rising to her cheeks. There were stat requirements for some items. Good to know. Wish she’d known that earlier. She let out a sigh, “Nearly threw my back out trying to pick up one of those things before I integrated,” Anna grumbled to Pixel and glanced its way when it didn’t respond, “I was just pissed off, you can talk. Sorry.”

“Oh good! I was going to explain stat requirements to you when you fell over so abruptly, I assumed something like that must have happened,” Pixel said cheerily. “It seems that you have the information already well in hand.”

She made a sour face, “Yeah,” She rubbed her neck, “I’m gonna need a wheelbarrow to move those bones somewhere else,” She said thoughtfully before stopping at the sidewalk. She realized she hadn’t left the area of her house since everything started. 

It felt a little strange, come to think of it. She glanced across the street to the house immediately in front of her house and licked her lips. She peered around, still clear. She rolled her shoulders and bounced up and down a few times. The boots really did reduce the weight of the armor, she felt like she could run pretty easily in it. She held out her cudgel and tightened her grip around the handle only to frown at it, “That’s weird,” She said, her fingers felt tight and uncomfortable.

“What is?” Pixel asked.

“Grip feels wrong,” She said thoughtfully and readjusted how she held it a few times until a sense of comfort washed over her fingers. She raised her eyebrows, “Huh.”

“While an armor proficiency will provide you with some general information as to how to equip your gear, weapon proficiencies do not simply feed you a fighting style,” Pixel explained. “Instead it will nudge you in the right direction by feel.”

Anna nodded, “Oh cool, that’s actually better, I wanted to get the hang of it myself,” She said and tried out an overhead swing only to stop when her shoulder, wrist, and upper arm tightened a bit, “Yeah there it is, that was a bad swing,” She murmured and gave it a few more swings, adjusting here and there to see what felt better. At times new muscles tightened while others relaxed. She must have swung almost fifty times before she brought the weapon down with a rush of air, the feeling was just right.

Anna admired the weapon, “Oh that was nice, I get it now,” Anna said with a grin. “I’ll have to spend some time practicing.”

“That is the purpose of a proficiency!” Pixel enthused as Anna got to walking.

She crossed the street and stepped onto the lawn, it was far more neatly cut than her own. Her mother not nearly as interested in the homeowners association rules as others. She walked up to the door and shifted on her feet, “Sorry Mister Hensley,” She said and with a grunt kicked her foot out at the door. 

BANG!

The door snapped open with a single kick, the dead bolt coming with it. She stared at the door, then at her foot, then at the door again. “Oh, shit.” Five points in strength seemed like a lot. Speaking of which, she had points to spend. She walked into the house and glanced around, the air smelled different from her house. Potpourri and something else that she couldn’t quite place. She ignored it for now and pulled up her character sheet.

Resources:
HP: 55/55 | SP: 55/55 | MT: 0/61

Attributes: Available Free Points: 9
Strength: 10 | Agility: 7 | Intellect: 9
Vitality: 11 | Endurance: 11 | Willpower: 13
Awareness: 9 | Insight: 10 | Presence: 15

She had nine points to spend. She noted that there was a plus and minus symbol next to each of her stats. The minus symbols were all greyed out. She got the jist. She put one point experimentally into vitality and glanced up at her health. It jumped up from fifty five to sixty. So five points of health per point of vitality. She also noticed her Mana Tolerance go up by a single point. So it definitely does influence mana tolerance a little bit.

She removed the point and it went back to normal. She did the same with her endurance and saw her stamina jump by five points and her tolerance increase by a point as well. She nodded and reset it. She glanced down at her Presence stat. Given her heritage it seemed like the one to put a bit of effort into. She didn’t want to put too much weight into it though otherwise she’d handicap herself in other ways. She also knew she’d be getting more in intelligence and willpower as she leveled up. She ended up putting three into Presence, and two into Vitality, Strength, and Endurance.

Confirm Attribute Point distribution? Yes / No

Yes.

Resources:
HP: 65/65 | SP: 65/65 | MT: 0/65

Attributes: Available Free Points: 0
Strength: 12 | Agility: 7 | Intellect: 9
Vitality: 13 | Endurance: 13 | Willpower: 13
Awareness: 9 | Insight: 10 | Presence: 18

“Good stuff,” Anna said only to hesitate as she felt a tingling in her skin. She blinked and looked down at her arms as she felt her muscles tense and her bones ache a little. The feeling passed a few seconds later. She was about to ask what it was but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the attribute points were doing their work on her body. The only reason she hadn’t felt the changes from her titles and what not was probably because the changes had taken place in that void place where she’d been integrated. She rolled her arm and tested out the feeling, “Alright, time for some shopping!”

“Isn’t this looting, Miss Anna?” Pixel pointed out.

“I’ll pay him back, eventually,” Anna said.

“No you will not,” Pixel said.

Anna nodded, “No, no I will not,” She agreed and marched down the hall, glancing once at the living room before slipping into the kitchen where the important stuff was. He probably had some stuff in the other rooms of his house but she wasn’t about to go around lugging everything out unless she needed it. She’ll probably take an inventory of the place. For now, she needed to snag things she could eat. She walked past the fridge and ignored it, whatever was in there would have started to go bad by now.

Instead she went straight for the cupboard and began sifting through, most of it was dry ingredients, box pasta, a painfully organized assortment of spices, cake mix, she pushed through all that crap and found the canned goods. There wasn’t a lot, not a surprise for a snooty guy like Mister Hensley, but there was some stuff. Mostly canned ingredients like vegetables and tomatoes. She pulled it all out and was happy to see there were even a few canned meals. “Jackpot!” Anna cheered and quickly stashed those into her bag. She left the other ones out on the counter to grab later.

She walked out of the kitchen and paused at the stairs. She pursed her lips and looked up, hesitated, then rolled her eyes and marched up. She went to the master bedroom door and threw it open. “I fucking knew it!” She proclaimed when she saw the black straps attached to each corner of the bed. She laughed and turned away, marching down the stairs. “Mom said I was crazy, but I knew it!”

“I fail to understand the success you just achieved,” Pixel said beside her and she jumped.

“Shit!” She gasped, “Fuck!”

“You forgot I was here already?” Pixel asked, its volume dipping.

“No!” She protested way too hard, “Just, surprised me,” She grunted and walked down the stairs, “I just wanted to confirm something.”

“That the owner of this house had a rather common fetish?” Pixel pressed. “He would have generally good company in a rather significant sample size of the multiverse.”

Anna whipped her head and stared at Pixel, “I-” She held up a finger, “You’re a day old!” She countered uselessly and stormed out of the house, embarrassed. “I didn’t need to know that shit,” She grumbled as she made a beeline for the next house. What followed was Anna going door to door, busting doors in and looting the kitchens for whatever canned food she could find along with any water bottles that were also available. Most folks in her neighborhood didn’t invest in water bottles, it was a pretty well off neighborhood, but a few did so heavily. 

Preppers.

Eventually she made almost twelve trips back to her house before she was well and truly done. She had stocked up months worth of canned meals and at least a thousand water bottles. It was a really good haul and she was pretty proud of what she’d managed to round up. By then, though, it was dark and she was starting to get hungry. That was when she realized that she had another problem. She didn’t have a way to cook this stuff. She scratched her head and considered her options. A camp fire would be the easiest but that was as good as advertising where she was.

Wait… didn’t Mister Hensley have a portable gas stove? Yeah, he used to brag about it when he went camping. She thought and hurried to her feet, “Cmon, Pixel!” She shouted and raced across the street again, starting to go through every closet in the house. “Where is it?” She muttered after shutting the closet of the man’s bedroom. She saw things she really wished she hadn’t in there. She sighed and made her way down the stairs before spotting a door at the far end of the kitchen. “Oh yeah! Garage!”

She hurried over, Pixel providing light as she made her way into the garage and froze. 

“Oh,” Anna trailed off, “That kind of camping.”

She’d never seen the inside of the man’s garage and now she knew why. It was a taxidermy workshop, with full ventilation system and everything. She made a point not to give much of the creepy stuff inside the space much thought. It was really organized, though, meticulously so. Super creepy. From the workstation she saw another setup of camping tools set neatly in carefully labeled stacks or mounted on hooks on the wall. She snatched up the stove and a few cans of propane and shoved them into her bag before turning to the third wall.

“Uh…” She trailed off, “Aren’t you supposed to have a safe for that kind of stuff?” She asked nobody in particular as she looked over the rifles hanging from the wall. They looked pretty old, Antiques? Probably why he has them on display. There was a short metal cabinet beneath them with several drawers and a lid at the top. She grabbed the lid and tugged a few times but it didn’t open, it didn’t even creak. Safe, I’m guessing.

She shrugged, I’ll probably be able to open it eventually, or find the key somewhere. She thought dismissively as she ambled back out of the garage and quickly made her way back to her house, “Thanks again for the light Pixel.”

“It is a passive ability, nothing to thank me for, Miss Anna,” The little ball of glowing goop said cheerily. She wondered what it would sound like if it was capable of showing any form of emotion with its voice. The thought was a little weird now that she was getting used to the way it spoke. The changes in volume were enough of a hint, she guessed.

Finally she had everything she needed. She hooked up the cans of gas to the stove and with a few clicks a little flame erupted from the element. She grabbed some supplies from the kitchen and cracked open a pair of cans, pouring them out and starting to cook. A few minutes later she had a hot meal in a bowl and was sitting with the spellbook open in her lap, reading the first couple of pages.

“So mana comes from this Astral Sea, thing,” Anna read, squinting at the pages with the help of Pixels close proximity.

“Quite so, the Astral Sea is the void between universes, domains, and planes of existence,” Pixel said, “It is infinitely vast and infinitely dense.”

“Mana comes through a… membrane? What the fuck?” She kept reading, “Some call it the ‘veil’, huh, that's some familiar terminology,” She took a bite of the ravioli she’d made and chewed, flipping a few pages before she got to the first spell in the book. Obviously it was Mana Barrier.

“So okay, mana’s the fuel source, I’m the medium, and the spell is the process, am I getting that right?” Anna asked.

“In an oversimplified sense, yes,” Pixel agreed.

She squinted at it but decided not to rise to the bait, “Hokay, and mana…” She flipped back a few pages, “...basic building block of the universe, raw energy, yada yada, ” She paused, “And I’m putting that through my body to cast a spell,” She pursed her lips, “I get the mana tolerance thing now.”

She sighed, she might as well give it a shot. She held out her hand and concentrated on the spell. A lot of things happened at that moment. The first thing that happened was she felt the slightly unsettling sensation of herself opening up. That was the only way to describe it, like she was allowing something in. Then came the fire. It was like magma suddenly appeared in her veins, entering her body right below her navel and then spreading out in a wave until it reached her hand, at the same time a circular diagram exactly like the one in the spellbook popped unbidden into her mind. With a rush of sensation the heat vanished, leaving only a few smoldering kernels behind. The result was a glowing blue-violet sheet of glass floating in front of her palm. The sensation of having mana in her body was… incredible. For that one second of casting time she felt limitless. It was the only word she had to describe it.

She let out a shuddering breath, “Woah.”