Masenia: Chapter 26 A Game of Chance (Patreon)

Chapter 26

A Game Of Chance

Years passed in the blink of an eye.

Despite her struggles, there were limits to what Maria was capable of personally achieving. Yet, everything went according to plan. Within the first twenty years, Maria had managed to get her minion to challenge and conquer the other nodes for her. Once a node was conquered, the minion would come back and spend time training with her.

The bunny having had a weaker foundation found itself progressing to the third and fourth tiers of mastery all while Maria remained steadfast in her desire to max out her maximum attributes before moving onto the third tier of her different masteries.

To perfectly master herself and her abilities, Maria knew that she would need to get to the vaunted 400 marking in each of her attributes. See, in the past restart Maria had been offered both a blessing and a curse of perfection. The perfect evolution was something so hard to achieve that it was only spoken about in hushed whispers. Also, there was a misconception that the faster one achieved their next tiers of power, the greater the chances they had at succeeding. But this sadly was not the case and led to many paper tigers in her past life, heroes who were able to focus on one Attribute to the detriment of all other abilities. Basically, these people would pigeonhole themselves into being able to meet one particular type of challenge, until even that challenge was too much for them to handle.

Maria having lived through lifetimes of paper tigers knew the problems with such evolutions.

Thus when her minion had transferred to the third tier of evolution, it was only expected that the bunny would challenge her.

Speed.

Rabbits are fast, evolved minions are especially so. Even still, the rabbit was nothing special.

You are being challenged by your subdued companion for ownership of your property.

Seeing the message, Maria knew that this was both inevitable and a waste. The rabbit likely could have won, had it played its cards right. But the rabbit was ultimately an animal, and incapable of reasoning. See, there was one problem with challenging someone you had already lost to.

As this opponent has already lost to you once, its attributes and abilities will be halved while in your presence.

Even at its full power, the rabbit would not have been able to keep up with Maria, particularly if she had decided to go all out. The reason for this was simple, while Maria might have been outmatched in speed, she still had both Magic and Psychic powers to fall back on. Just the thought of using her full powers would have been enough to kill the rabbit’s soul, forever crippling the creature. Yet, she abstained from that venture, as she felt that the rabbit was a worthy companion, slow, but able to perform a given task within reason.

The rabbit called forth energy, causing rippling waves of force and power to wash over and through it. Then just before it was set to charge forward and unleash the full might of its tier III power, it made the critical mistake of locking eyes with Maria.

Maria, whose spirit Attribute far outpaced every attribute combined of the rabbit just stared. Stared, and then locking gazes engaged in a battle of wills with the beast. Once there, in that sacred space, she felt the fear that the rabbit felt, this was the fear that bound the creature to her, making it a loyal minion. It was also the same fear that Maria took ruthless advantage of.

Hunters had to go through the same process with their monsters. It was always said that a hunter, one who tames magical beasts should try to outpace the advancement of their beasts to avoid soul challenges like this. However, that was only for the ones who were weak in mind and mental fortitude, for a beast was stubborn, willful, and above all full of the newly released chaos of the world. To tame a beast was to tame a sentient part of nature.

That was why when Maria entered the mind of the beast, she didn’t hold back her attack. In the mental space, her Spirit Attribute was king, linking together the forbidden powers of the planet and empowering her mental projection. Here she had a physical body, or at least what appeared to be a physical body, but really it was our mind made manifest, as she was allowed to fight at the peak of her abilities, while mental chains of fear held back the true fighting force of her minion.

She almost felt guilty for the one-sided beatdown she applied to the beast, almost. As one would expect fighting a weakened chained beast, there was little to no resistance. The movements of the beast were easy to see and easily constrained under their own fear. Yet, Maria showed the beast no mercy, not until every ounce of fight was pummeled out of the minion.

Whimpering.

By the time the beast finally stopped its fight, Maria just stood there coldly, waiting for the beast to come and fight in its all too predictable patterns. Each time it would come, she would deliver a devastating mana infused backhand of force, a well-placed kick, or other such attack that would ultimately break down the will of the challenger.

Cowering.

The rabbit fought until it was little more than a bleeding quivering mass of fluff and pain.

“Are you done?” Maria finally asked, when the rabbit made to rise, but then defeatedly finally slumped down into a broken heap.

Nodding.

With that acknowledgement, the fight was over.

You have maintained dominance with your subordinate creature. The next time your subordinated creature will be able to challenge you is when they reach two tiers of evolution above your own.

Seeing the message, Maria knew that she would likely have to face the rabbit once or twice more, especially before she maxed out her attributes so that she could achieve her perfect evolution.

At first, she had hoped that the Gambling function would be available to her. In her past she remembered that it showed up almost immediately, but her memory seemed to be off as it had been years since she entered the confines of her node and still hadn’t received notice of such an option being made available.

For a moment, she wondered if she could even access the shop inside a node, but quickly reminded herself how it was always there, even inside these very death traps. In fact, places like this were where survivors like herself would often mentally turn to the gambler’s hall. The reason was simple, as it gave a clear advantage in combat, for time within the gambler’s hall allowed an adventurer to rest and mentally relax, despite the dangers around them. Thus, it was common practice to use the gambler’s halls as a short reprieve while fighting boss monsters inside nodes. While your physical body was still subject to all the constraints placed upon it, while here you could mentally focus on what you wanted to do, before being let loose in the world. Of course, there was a price to using the Gambler’s Hall, for every time you entered the Hall, you had to play one hand, house rules. And every hand required the wagering of at least one Attribute point.

The games were of course rigged, designed to set you up with a false sense of security, as you were fated to win your first two hands and three of your first four hands. Thus, setting everyone at ease on the dangers of gambling. The only thing was that such victories only made it, so people chased the next victory, only to often fall short when the time struck. Yet, after so many times and so many people recording their success rates within the Gambler’s Hall, this was something that she figured would have been denied to her and her people now that they were on their seventh and final iteration.

Yet, she was fortunately mistaken, as she was finally met with the message that she had been waiting for all along.

Congratulations: By now you have survived your first life or death challenge on your planet. As you are no doubt aware, your planet is being put through a forced transformation process. To better assist you, the great trial has been put in place to help evolve you so that you can survive in the new world you find yourself apart of. As a means of helping, you achieve your true potential faster, you will find that a new feature has been made available for those of you who feel truly lucky.

New Feature Added: Gambler’s Hall: This is a personal shop designed to help you achieve your maximum potential in the fastest way possible. How it works, simple, you will play a game of chance. To play you must first wager a set amount of Attribute points you wish to wager. If you win, the number of wagered Attribute points will be doubled from the respective pool that you wagered from. If you lose, the number of Attribute points wagered will be removed from the perspective pools. Note: You cannot wager more Attribute points than you currently possess, and your Attributes cannot drop below 1. Meaning if you wish to wager 10 Attribute points, you will need to have at least an 11 in the Attribute that you are wagering to increase.

Note: There is no limit to how many Attribute points you can lose, but at most a total of 10,000 Attribute points can be gained for any particular Attribute.

Of course, the powers that be put in the stipulation about the maximum earnings due to people like Maria, people who knew the secret to such a Gambler’s Hall.

Do you wish to test your luck at the Gambler’s Hall?

“Yes.” Maria said defiantly.

Are you sure, you will need to make at least one wager, and wager at least one Attribute points in a game of chance?

“Yes.” Maria answered again.

Very well, initiating spirit link to the Gambler’s Hall now.

Seeing the message, Maria let out a long breath, as she waited to see if the results of her past lifetime would still be registered within the Gambler’s Hall.

Welcome, we see that this is your first time at our establishment, would you like a quick tutorial?

“No.” Maria said, knowing that the tutorial would count as one of her two free automatic wins.

Very well, welcome to the game of chance, please select which Attributes you wish to gamble with, along with the numerical value you wish to wager for each Attribute, reminder all bets are final.

With that, Maria had her attribute tab pulled up before her.

Current Attribute   Rating(s):

241 / 400 (All   +1%)

Spirit 400 (+11%)

Strength 392 (+11%)

Speed 400 (+11%)

Endurance 387 (+11%)

Intelligence 292 (+1%)

Seeing how far she had come; she couldn’t help but feel a bit ashamed that she couldn’t make the threshold needed for reaching a perfect third tier evolution on her own. Still, this was something that she would have come to eventually, also the ten thousand attribute cap was not a joke. While the Hall won often, there were those who eventually pieced together the chain of events that would lead to constant success, or nearly constant success. Maria also knew that right now, at the very beginning, was the best time to take advantage of the system.

Seeing the numbers, she began wagering accordingly.

You are wagering the following:

Spirit 0

Strength 4

Endurance 8

Intelligence 59

All other Attributes 80

Do you wish to proceed with the random chance of fate?

Mentally pausing for a second Maria took in a breath, and then let it out. This would be a big blow to her development if she was wrong. But she also knew that if she let any of these known hit chances pass her by, she would kick herself later.

“Yes.”

Rolling for random chance.

There was the sound of dice randomly rolling, but of course Maria knew this all to be fake. There was no chance, not truly, at least not according to her past life.

Then when she thought she had messed up and made it so that her minion would be able to not only catch up, but surpass her, she got the message she had been waiting for.

Critical success.

Your wager has been doubled.

Spirit 0

Strength 8

Endurance 13 (14, but you reached your tier limits)

Intelligence 118

All other Attributes 159 (160, but you reached your tier limits)

Seeing the message, Maria let out a long sigh, she had done it, she had reached the perfect threshold for evolving to the next tier in all three facets of her Mind, Body, and Soul.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to focus on evolving right here, but was quickly met with a system message letting her know that such an act was impossible.

You are apparently trying to evolve to a higher tier in a pocket dimension where your mind is separated from your body. In this dimension such an evolution is impossible. You will first need to leave the pocket dimension for the Gambler’s Hall and then merger your consciousness back with your body. Only then can you make the evolutionary changes that you are trying to achieve.

Seeing the message, Maria let out a sigh, as she realized that she should have expected this, or at least something like this to happen.

Mentally shaking her head, she exited the Gambler’s Hall, and felt her mind fall back into her body. Then as her consciousness fell, she felt a string of energy follow her from the hall straight into her body. Now that she was here, she felt her mind, body, and soul expand as she could feel the limitations of her body. Her body, or rather the current shell that was her body was too weak to fully contain the level of power that was coursing through her. Just like the time a few days ago, when she was sitting on the toilet before the last system restart, she could feel how easy it was to force the next evolution.

As she awoke, she felt the trembling consciousness of her minion staring at her. Even to her minion, her recent gain in power was undeniable.

“Guard me.” Maria said, her voice commanding and direct as she could feel her words grabbing hold of the weakened mind of her minion and all but force obedience out of the creature. While she did feel that such acts were mean, they were also needed, as any interruption, any deviation in her focus could have crippling effects on her evolution.

With her meeting of the four wise women, Maria realized that there was a ten times multiplier for achieving a perfect evolution. With this, she knew that if she wanted to continue getting perfect evolutions, she would need to do the same thing, once again get a ten times multiplier for her Attributes. Meaning that rather than having 400 be her attribute maximum, she would now need 4,000 to be her attribute maximum. At least, she would need 4,000 to be her maximum, if she wanted to make another perfect evolution.

Thinking about the end goal, she wondered which form she should try to evolve first, whether it be her Mind, Body, or her Soul.

After a moment of deliberation, she figured that the only true way to meet her maximum potential was to try to evolve all three at the same time.

With her mind convinced that evolving all three paths simultaneously was the best solution, she first focused her mind on what she wanted the end state to be, and then she began breaking down her previously constructed safe points and began pushing and stretching each point to its furthest point.

In her mind she knew that her ability alone to create a perfect evolution was nearly impossible, in fact it was only thanks to her seeing the base that served as her first evolutionary point that made it so she could imagine what the next perfect evolution would look like.

In her mind she saw her current form as a sixteen-sided diamond, one that was capable of being attacked or struck from any side and withstanding a blow equally on all sides. With this evolutionary template, provided by the gods as her example, Maria pushed her mind and consciousness to its limits, trying to at least imitate the structure as best as possible.

Yet, the harder she pushed, the harder completing a perfect evolution became. Not only did she have limited resources to complete the process, but the more she pushed, the thinner her own personal design became. It was like having the resources to make the design you wanted perfectly, but if you push too hard, reinforce too much, then the structure will weaken slightly. Not much, nothing that can make any real impact immediately, but one that will show itself in time.

Just as her rabbit was essentially a speed demon with little else going for it, so too could Maria cripple herself if she messed this part up, which was why she focused so diligently on improving the shape and structure. Spending hours to fix segments that most people would lose patience with after minutes. Spending days on solving distribution and balancing functions that others would stop worrying about after a few hours. Then finally she spent months making it so the shape was upheld in a way that was functional. Having already been through the process of evolution one time, she began remembering more and more as time went on. There was a subtle art that was needed from the third evolution onward, namely movement. By this point in her evolution, she knew that the higher tiers would require movement and complex designs to uphold their shape.

With that knowledge in mind, Maria let the design rotate slowly, as she mentally smoothed out the sides, going from a sharp diamond model to a smoother spherical design. Then once she was comfortable with the side, feeling that she had reached her mental limit on how much space she could forcefully maintain, she exhaled and let her will solidify the final shape. The moment she did, was the moment she was met with a system message, one that would let her know exactly how far she had gone down the path of enlightenment.

Evolutionary Point Met, Calculating results…