Fate Points - Ch 54 (Patreon)

The information snapped into existence on the wall he was looking at.

Class: Lightning Tank - Expert Class

This class is a hybrid melee damage and tank role. It specialised in movement speed and lightning.

Class acquisition bonus of

• Skill:      Lightning feet. (Tier 3)

Visible electricity propels your feet and reduces air resistance. Grants increased speed and can be used offensively to create a minor shocking effect. Improves with level and can be toggled on and off.

Because of spark proficiency, the starting skill level is 12.

• Skill:      Lightning Dodge. (Tier 4)

Life saving skill. Lightning is your friend and you will automatically be zapped to a nearby location to avoid an otherwise fatal blow. At higher skill levels, an active ability to use the short-term teleport during combat is enabled.

Because of spark proficiency, the starting skill level is 6.

Class Level Rewards

• 3      Vitality.
• 3      Strength.
• 2      Class Skill Points.

Prerequisites.

• Obtain      20 Natural Points in Vitality - Achieved
• Obtain      20 Natural Points in Strength - Achieved
• Has      an existing class of Advanced or higher - Achieved
• Possess      a lightning skill ability at Tier 0 of a 128 or higher - Achieved

Tom skimmed over the details, as he knew them by heart. It was expert just like his Elemental Summoner class. That meant six attribute points per level and an unbalanced attribute allocation.

There were no free attribute points in either class to assign.

You couldn’t progress an attribute locked expert class by themselves in a vacuum.

The easiest way to conceptualise the problem was to consider what theLightning Tank class gave as attributes. Vitality which had no downsides and strength. The second was the problem as continuously increasing strength without improving agility would break you. Agility needed to remain at least fifty percent of strength through preferably closer to seventy percent, or you would have no control over your actions. If your strength lagged too much stuff like basic sword forms, would be as likely to take your foot off as be successful and any sort of acrobatic attempts would end in disaster.

With Fate’s Agility and if he moved the two different classes up in tandem, he guaranteed all attributes progressed mostly evenly with the ability to prioritise physical attributes or magic depending on which of the two classes went faster.

This class let him progress the attributes that were otherwise missing from his build and the two starting skills were incredible. Particularly the second one, which was literally a lifesaving skill.

All that was nice, but he focused on the only the bit of the information that mattered.

Prerequisites - Achieved.

“Buy Lightning Tank and as many class levels as possible.”

Loud trumpets went off, and more than one.

Tom smiled at the thought of more titles and then his ability to think vanished as the two skills flooded into him. Lightning Dodge was a vague presence. He knew it was there and continually circulating just out of sight, but that was all the information supplied. Lightning Steps was different. First, there was the ability to toggle it off or on, but the data download also contained the steps required to flare or restrain the spell while in use. For a Spell it was a surprisingly large amount of technical knowledge. It was a lot better than he had given it credit for. There was room for experimentation but something about a skill that could be used to both kick harder and paralyse mammals at the same time was sort of appealing.

As his mind cleared, Tom turned his attention to that explosion of titles. He was not shocked because he had theorised that titles were available, but the duration of the announcement was a surprise.

That was not a single title being awarded it was multiple.

“Yes!”

He fist pumped then looked around furtively only relaxing when the brain caught up with the fact that he was in the system room and therefore had no observers. Behaving like a teenager would have been embarrassing, but luckily no one was around to see.

A smile split his face. Everything was coming together perfectly.

“Display full status.”

Classes Level - Eight

Lightning Tank: 2 (+2) - Expert

Elemental Summoner: 6 - Expert

Attributes

Strength: 66 (+6 Class, +1 Title: Strength Spring, Natural Strength +3)

Vitality: 76 (+6 Class, +2 Title: Vitality font, Natural Vitality +2)

Agility: 58 (+4 Trait: Fates Agility)

Magic: 71

Fate: 119 (+4 Trait: Fates Agility, +2 Title: Competition Shaker (I))

Mana Pool: Mana * 2 = 142

Unassigned Attributes: 8 (+8 Title: Expert Eight)

Spells

Spark: 133 (tier 0)

Lightning Ball: 18 (tier 3)

Lightning Skin: 18 (+1) (tier 2)

Touch Heal: 95 (tier 0)

Summon Playful Wisp: 51 (tier 0)

Summon Lightning Elemental: 15 (tier 3)

Summoner: (23) (tier 1)

Low Light Vision: 42 (Tier 0)

Clean Others 1 (tier 0)

Clean Teeth 2 (+1) (tier 0)

Cut Hair 1 (tier 0)

Teeth

Skills

Pact Master: 23 (tier 2)

Elemental Whisper: 38 (tier 1)

Elastic Regenerating Skin: 18 (+2) (Tier 2)

Burst Cast: 62 (tier 0)

Plane Sense: 25  (tier 2)

Health Burn: 5 (+4) (tier 3)

Mana burn: 2 (+1) (tier 3)

Lightning Feet: 6 (tier 4) New

Lightning Dodge: 6 (tier 4) New

Class Skills

Class spell boost (19)

Unassigned: Lightning Tank Skill Points + 6

Traits

Free Class Slot, Epic Soul Space, Fates Agility, Child of Elements, Elemental Summoner Passives

Titles

Lighting Mystic, Friend of the Elementals, Strength Spring, Vitality Fount, Healing Sponge(III), Venom Resistance (V), Competition Shaker (I), Trial Dominator (II), Trial Speedster (IX), Expert Eight (new), Double Advance (new), Double Expert (new)

Other

Soul Space: increased to 10 slots (+2) and 0.26 (+.04) metres cubed

Experience: 3,821  (-9000 Levels, - 10000 Rare Class, +20124 Wasps, + 3000 titles)

Ranking Points: 1278 (+278)

Position on human ranking ladder: 4

The excessive amount of information took a while to wade through and it reminded him exactly why he hated showing it all.

There were a few useful nuggets hidden in amongst the boring stuff.

Trumpets aside, he knew he had one title called ‘Expert Eight’that awarded him eight extra attribute points, but he didn’t know if it was a once off or a regular attribute source like what would happen if the attributes had been backdated. Now that his build for the next while was finalised he needed to think more carefully about the assignment of these free attributes points as they might be the last he would be getting. Unlike most people, neither of his classes granted free points which could plug gaps in his build. The fact Fates Agility ate any he generated by leveling a class was the only reason the trait had been affordable.

Tom’s plan was to progress both classes in tandem, but there were too many moving parts to get his head around easily. For example, was he going to struggle to raise a specific attribute?

“Show attributes assigned with four levels of both classes.”

Strength: +16 (+12 Class (Lightning Tank), +4 Title: Strength Spring)

Vitality: +18 (+12 Class (Lightning Tank), +8 Title: Vitality font)

Agility: +16 (+16 Trait: Fates Agility)

Magic: +22  (+24 Class (Elemental Summoner), -2 Fates agility)

Fate: +24 (+16 Trait: Fates Agility, +8 Title: Competition Shaker (I))

Strength and agility were going to become his lagging attributes, and the one thing Tom was absolutely certain of was that agility was a critical attribute for his fighting style.

All attributes were as valuable as each other. Strength was power and speed. Agility, he guessed was control and if it lagged strength too much, you would end up going too fast to control yourself in a fight.

That was bad news.

It was like why vitality could not be ignored even if your build was based upon avoiding damage. When jumping in the air, launched you two metres straight. If you had an earth level vitality, you were going to break bones and tear muscles. The human average across all three physical attributes was forty, and while he could pat himself on the back for his sixty-six strength that was not that incredible. At a practical level, a body-builder on earth would beat him in most strength activities. Not even only professionals, dedicated amateurs would have beat. He was only sixty percent stronger than a typical human. Anyone who worked out daily probably had starting strength more than that.

It was why he had confidently gambled on being able to get twenty natural strength points in a timely fashion. On earth anyone with sufficient training could double their strength. The difference between here and there is that your mass did not increase, so that power in your muscles converted to speed with a better ratio. On earth, the extra power was offset by weight, which actually made strong people slower. The downside didn’t exist, so as the strength attribute increased, so did your raw speed. Using said speed was a different matter entirely.

Tom assessed how he would grow. His planning had been thrown slightly by the titles, but his attribute progression was still mostly balanced.

With a thought, he assigned to the free points agility, and he also knew that it was something he would have to do with all of his free points going forward. If he got any in the future. He liked a ratio of closer to twice as much agility to strength and his growth projections had him getting nowhere near that.

Agility: 66 (+8 free attribute points)

Tom was pleased with himself. He was not a powerhouse even for the weak group that surrounded him, but with an average attribute score of over seventy in the ones easily measured put him as a rank seven. He had gone from last to being stronger than around thirty percent of the surrounding people.

Time. He needed to go faster.

Tom rechecked his change in points.

The patterns had changed. He was no longer getting a ranking point per queen kill and experience had stabilised at five thousand per day to reflect how often the bloody things were mutating, meaning that he effectively continually faced a new creature a couple of times a day. Even the look of the wasps had changed. Simple stuff like black to blue to yellow and then red but also body shape. The ones they were fighting now no longer looked like the classic deadly insects from earth but were closer to squat fat flies.

Tom tapped his fingers on his leg while thinking.

Was there anything he needed to change?

His eyes were drawn to the three questions he had available.

Was there a question that he could ask now that would make a difference?

His fingers drummed a nonsense tune. He relived singing poorly to himself those first few years. Then he had forgotten both tunes and words and given up. If he had a radio and heard the starting two bars of the songs, it might come back to him once more, but for now music was lost in time.

He remembered streaming whatever he wanted. Listening while studying, then turning it off when it became too distracting. He had never realised how great life had been before this shit had happened.

Forcefully, Tom centred his mind.

He knew he was daydreaming partially to delay having to return.

People exhausted him. After so many years in isolation, it was hard to be around them, but also wonderful.

He had questions and a murderer to find.

But what could he ask?

Yes or no answers were so limiting. Does the murderer have red hair? Are they female? If the numbers of suspects were reduced, then maybe twenty questions could reveal who it was.

But those questions were meant for later.

He left the system room to avoid the temptation. The camp bustled around him.

There would never be enough of them and using them frivolously to find a killer. He shook his head. Creating the conditions he needed for his ritual would burn them all out many times over. If everyone excluding his team died, then unfortunately…

Tom weighed the numbers, and the mathematics didn’t lie. Sixty people versus six billion that wasn’t even a rounding error. Humanity was more important than a couple of individual lives. He already knew he was safe and that his friends were safe. Was saving Bob’s life worth a question? The policeman was earnest and tried through his limitations. But was his life worth a question?

How about that guy who collected all the soldiers and queens and doubled the auction value of the components by processing them properly? He had created wealth for Tom and always shared a grunt when he passed. An acknowledgment with no judgement attached to it. That was important.

Was his life worth a question?

Tom had always understood hard decisions. He had totally expected to make them but turning a blind eye to a killer going through the community.

Tom shut his eyes to enter the system room. Then looked up at the metal roof while the pressure of the choices, the hard decision he needed to make built up. Lives of people he knew compared to theoretically improving his chances on an experimental gamble.

People dying… his fault.

The ritual failing… his fault.

What should he be doing? His jaws clamped shut in frustration. His fist balling tight.

His questions couldn’t ask about the use of other questions. He couldn’t sacrifice one question to know he was making the right choice.

People he knew, people who cooked for him, had leant him their hammer.

Ignore them?

“God this is hard!” He screamed.

“Did you mean DEUS?” A soft, amused female voice asked.

He jumped.

Then he recognised it was Dux and the familiar warm bubbly laughter behind it. “DEUS this is hard. I believe is the phrasing you were after.”

“Wouldn’t that feed into Blasphemy?”

“Or is saying God instead of DEUS blasphemy?”

Tom stood still, wondering if she was serious. She did not sound it, but if she was, he would not appreciate it.

She laughed. Don’t look so scared. “Neither use passes the threshold.”

He sagged in relief and then the presence was gone and he knew he was alone once more.

That was interesting. He had believed Dux was gone forever, but apparently that was not the case.

Tom re-marshalled his thoughts and decided he was being silly. Those ten thousand questions had given him a plan, and he had to keep carrying it through. As much as he would like to hunt down the serial killer, he would need to do it with more mundane means. The questions were needed to save humanity and he would not risk that.

For now, the questions would go unused. He was safe, his friends were safe. What else did he need?

Companions and titles, lots of titles.

“Show new titles.”