Chapter 73 –Extra Sessions

AG. Apologies for poor communication last week.

I think I'm back. This chapter is 4.6k and I did it mostly yesterday. I'm still not recovered, (my self diagnosis is a flare up glandular fever caused by weakened immune system from covid but who knows.) Chapter tomorrow is fifty fifty but if I miss I'll try to do it the next day

Tom watched as his carefully recorded profile appeared on the wall. This was not official in any sense of the word, and bits of it were possibly out of date, but it was the most faithful reproduction of his status sheet he could produce from the use of the ritual status artefact in the isolation rooms.

The first section was about his attributes. Biologically, he had only just turned six, and the number reflected that weakness.

 Attributes – Overall Rank 0

Strength: 11 (+1)—Rank 0

Vitality: 10 (+2)—Rank 0

Agility: 9 (+2)—Rank 0

Magic: 4 —Rank 0

Mana: 8 (unattributed), 32 (Precognition, variable and requires active maintenance that can be sustained for around four hours per day)

Fate: 43              

Affinities

Precognition – 95, Earth – 87, Lightning – 87 (+3), Wood Shaping – 78, Healing – 71

His base attributes had crept up slightly and were now approaching the peak of tier-zero. They would likely reach the bottom rung of tier one once he got another two points in strength. Given his age and the way children matured, he expected to hit that milestone when his next growth spurt occurred - an event which, as far as he was concerned, was long overdue. He had gone from being of average height amongst his peers to shorter than average, a fact that irrationally annoyed him. He knew it was timing, but being amongst the shortest, even if it would only be for a brief period, was annoying.

Even if the gains were modest, the two points in agility represented a significant upgrade in his combat potential. Those simple numbers on the screen signified an increase in body control of thirty percent, a boost that had allowed him to get into the Divine Champions trial. Given how uncoordinated this body still felt, he couldn’t wait to grow older and grab more improvements to his base attributes.

His eyes scrolled further down the wall.

Spells

Touch Heal (10, +1) – Tier 0

Spark (27) – Tier 0

The numbers in brackets represented the level of the spell. Touch Heal only being ten annoyed him. He was used to it being far higher, and having thankfully already achieved those heights, regaining them would be easier than it would be for someone who had acquired the spell for the first time. He had boosted Spark as high as he had by stretching his control when he had first gained it, and that, Tom realised, was something he needed to do for his healing spell as well.

Levels were not an academic measure in Existentia. They were the opposite. They mattered in the real world. Promoting Touch Heal’s level by twenty to reach where Spark’s was would increase the potency of the spell by more than eighty percent. In a life-or-death battle, that was basically an extra life. Even if he wasn’t going to receive a threshold bonus until level thirty-two, every level increased the efficiency of Touch Heal, which meant given the benefits, it was not something he could ignore. He would have to work on it. Here, in the artificial confines of the orphanage, he wasn’t battling hordes of monsters on a daily basis. Progress was not going to come from the default benefit of surviving. Instead, unless he actively sought the confrontation, he would never get hurt sufficiently to progress. That was an issue he had to address. Stagnation in something so critical was unacceptable.

He continued on to review the next section.

Skills

Spear Mastery (5, +4) – Tier 0

Instant Strike (1) – Tier 1

Magic Breaking Power Strike (1) - Tier 1

Advanced Danger Sense (10, +1) – Tier 2,

Psychic Tracking (2, +1) – Tier 1

Crafting & Miscellaneous Skills

Social Silence (1) – Tier 7

Manipulate Precognition Mana (2, +1) – Tier 1,

Store Precognition Mana (2, +1) – Tier 1,

Convert Unaspected mana to Precognition Affinity (1) – Tier 1,

Create Precognition Attuned Mana (3, +2) – Tier 1

Living Wood Growth (1) – Tier 2

There had been a slight increase in a couple of his skills, but nothing particularly noteworthy. On the other hand, he was happy his crafting related abilities were being improved by use. Eventually, those levels would plateau, unless he started using them for more variable purposes, but for now he was happy with their progress. It was not like it was worth investing dedicated time into them. None of them were critical; they were all a long way away from reaching a level where he would get a threshold benefit from raising them, and there was no way he was ever going to be a crafter. 

He moved on to examining the next section. 

Traits

DEUSs Chosen (Tier 0)*, Speed Matching

Titles

Hunted Reincarnated, Competition Shaker (I), Evolution Master, Complex Conspiracy Discoverer, Sage of Fate (Earth), Unique Skill Creator, Reveal Hidden Threats, Trial Speedster (IX)

Special Titles:

 Underage Skill Development (II) – 15 skill points accumulated with next threshold level at 16. Current benefit is 1 free point every four levels.

???? Underage Spell Development – Current progress zero.

???? Underage Trait Development – Current Progress zero.  

???? Underage Title Development – Note this probably doesn’t exist as legendary title should have triggered it if it was a thing.  

*Locked until the earth age of ten and will not accumulate questions before that time

Basically, he had identified the likely presence of four underage titles based on the skill title that he knew existed, one for each of the different types of abilities. He was interested in tracking them separately from all of his base titles.

In Tom’s mind, there were two metrics of success for his childhood years. The first was how far he could raise his general combat proficiency, and the second were these special titles. If he could upgrade the first three, and he had no evidence that they didn’t exist, five times, he would be receiving six free attributes with every class level. Given skills had already been upgraded almost three times, that was not beyond the realm of possibility. That was bringing each of them to level five, but, if he could push to upgrade them six times instead, then his return would be twelve free points per level. At that point, to match someone’s rank he would only need five percent of their experience. If someone took twenty years to become powerful, he would be able to do it in two. Give him a decade, and he would be far more powerful than a human without the supporting titles even if they had seventy years in Existentia.

That type of in-built advantage was how he could make a difference in the thirty years he had.

He would even be able to catch up with Everlyn. While he didn’t know the particulars of her build, he was sure that she only had, at best, a couple of free attribute points from her titles at the time that he knew her. She had probably since upgraded her class to something mythical, but even if that was the case, she had a hundred levels where she was getting seven or eight attributes rather than the twenty per class level that Tom was going to hopefully end up with. The promise these titles gave him was truly a tantalising prospect. 

Better still, he was confident in his assumptions. So far, Underage Skill Development had progressed exactly how he had initially predicted it to progress. He hadn’t proven that the Spell and Trait versions existed, but he was certain about the Spell one, and, despite the early progress with Skills, he expected Spells to ultimately progress faster, because he had a road map to teach himself tier-three and four of healing, earth and lightning magics, which would rapidly grow his Spell Points.

Contrasting this with the skills, he only had access to a guide for tier-one and zero versions, which meant accumulating a large volume of points to contribute toward the title would be difficult. A single tier-four skill was worth sixteen tier-one versions, and a tier-six one thirty-six. Him developing a spell to tier-six was a possibility, because that is what the guides in the isolation room went up to. That meant that for spells he could imagine upgrading the title seven times, which would require two hundred and fifty-six points. For spells, that sort of outcome was possible. For skills, if he was limited to tier-one versions mastering that many, it was impossible. 

The title version that he had been hopeful to uncover probably didn’t exist, given he hadn’t even received the first level for getting a legendary title. It was possible that the title version differed from the skill one and used a different metric, like the absolute number of titles, and ignored rarity. If so, then once he started developing the resistance titles, it would be awarded to him. 

The final section of the sheet was not one that had been proven by the status screen ritual. Instead, it was based on his informed speculation, but was probably the most important section from Tom’s perspective. It contained the unknowns which were troubling him. 

Puzzling Abilities. 

Curse / Blessing – Uncontrollable Anger – Triggered by witnessing injustice and creates a berserker rage that increases attributes by 50% to ???.

Trait / Title – Immune to Mental Affects – Blocks all mind spells up to tier 5, continued but reduced effectiveness on higher tiered abilities. 

Trait / Title – See Through Illusions – Pierce all illusions up to tier 5 (?). Has continued but reduced effectiveness on higher tiered abilities. 

Trait / Title – Give Me More Stuff – Something that makes it more likely for adults to give me valuable items which appear to be tailored to what I need. Power unknown, but significant.  

The first and last were the ones that he had the least information on, and the middle two he had been able to quantify somewhat with Dimitri’s aid. While the Uncontrollable Anger definitely existed, there were lots of details that remained uncertain. For example, anecdotally, it felt like the longer he had had without an event occurring, the more the pressure would build up. The moment anything happened, that would trigger the spell the extent it was magnified by was increased by the weeks since he had last blown up. Likewise, the level of the buff it granted was an unknown quantity.

Give Me More Stuff was even more vague. There was no true evidence that it even existed. It was based on him being gifted unexpected objects from adults. In total, he had three gifts. Two of them were significantly more precious than what any other child had received, including those with not-parents tipping the scales. His good fortune could have been purely random, but Tom doubted it. Such an outcome beggared belief, but it was possible. From the latest conversation with Maurice and the earlier ones with Dimitri, he understood how valuable the trait he had gotten truly was. For it to have been gifted to him without some guiding force influencing events felt too improbable to be real, especially in the context of him also receiving a boost to his lightning affinity. This gift had almost caused the other adults to resort to fighting to stop him from getting it. One of those outcomes by itself might have been a giant stroke of fortune, and wouldn’t have been worth interrogating. But two of them? To Tom’s sensibilities, that was too much to be a coincidence, especially if you added the third gift. While it hadn’t been that expensive, the training ring had been a weird gift for a then-five-year-old, but for Tom’s future it was possibly as valuable as the others.

Despite not being as flashy, it was a significant piece of evidence that he possessed a title or trait like Give Me More Stuff. Tom considered himself to be logical, and that part of his mind scoffed at him imagining that he possessed such a powerful ability. However, there were issues that suggested him having something like that was not outlandish. There were the inconsistencies in his memories, his ridiculous precognition affinity, and the way everyone who discovered his true identity treated him.

It was possible that he could have earned a talent like the gifting ability. Not that it mattered. He had jotted the possibility down, and time would prove the accuracy of his speculation.

The days passed, and he watched the time on the Contender Challenger reduce until there was less than a week to go. Most days, he felt sick as he wondered if it was going to be enough. He was not one for self-delusions. While he had qualified, it had been an achievement gained by hitting the bare minimums rather than smashing past them. It was possible that all of his opponents would be better than him.

Every possible waking moment was dedicated to training, and, during the periods when he was stuck with others and his freedoms restricted, he actively focused on better understanding the intricacies of the orphanage for the first time. He wanted to know if there were any more training resources, like the lairs that he was using twice a week to hone his skills. His instincts screamed at him that he needed an extra something to get through the coming challenge.

The news was not good. His careful observations didn’t reveal anything new. They only confirmed that the longer sessions in the isolation room, which he required to train his resistances, didn’t become compulsory until he turned twelve. While he understood why that made sense from a psychological perspective, it did not gel with his plans. His aim was to acquire resistance titles, and only starting that process with one session a week at age twelve meant he wouldn’t physically have time to get all of them.

That night, as he entered the empty corridors on his way to train against the orcs, his eyes were drawn to the isolation rooms. Most of them were shut and needed to be signed into if he wanted to enter, but the ones on the ground floor were open, something he had noticed many times before but had not bothered to investigate.

Today, he wanted to check if they were the solution to his problem.

Given the planning that had gone into everything else, he was sure this was his solution to the need to have access to isolation rooms for an extended period.

He slipped through one of the open doors and glanced around curiously. The moment the door shut he felt the usual magic of the isolation room trigger, but, rather than the brief burst that normally happened, this one was extended and had more weight to it. Identification spells, a mixture of visible and invisible, flashed through the room. Some of the magic physically touched him and then stuck to him. In moments he was covered with multiple-coloured lines that crisscrossed with such density that every centimetre of him was highlighted.

With eyes wide-open, he examined the room, and everything was tagged the same. Furniture, books, toy boxes - they were all painted with the lines but that was not what Tom focused on. Instead, he made sure there were no unexpected shapes; the magic was clearly designed to reveal invisible entities. With his abilities to pierce illusions and his precognition affinity-fuelled Danger Sense, Tom understood that he personally didn’t need the visual display, but others would, and he wasn’t about to allow his arrogance to stop him from using the extra check.

There was a ding as the magical checks stopped. The screen to the left of the door lit up. Words immediately started to scroll across it. 

Infra-Red Test – One biological entity identified

Red Light Test – One biological entity identified.

Around thirty similar messages were displayed, covering all the wavelengths up to X-rays. Then the nature of the words changed.

Presence of Shadow Magic – Zero

Presence of Spatial Distortions – Zero

Mana Storage Devices – One (Internal to Biological entity.)

After displaying fifty of those summary messages in quick succession, the tests designed to ensure there were no enemy spies stopped. The depths that the room went to were impressive, and Tom wondered if those assassins would have been able to protect themselves against the huge barrage of tests. They obviously hadn’t been caught by them, but had they been driven out of these rooms? Had this single location in the orphanage been safe?

Nope, Tom thought.

Those particular natives, given their experience and probable classes, were too good. All these checks wouldn’t have been enough against them. They would possess the skills and spells to circumvent these hundred or so tests. It didn’t matter how amazing the defences seemed; they were only mechanical checks, and a talented, dedicated opponent, given time, would be able to counter them all. However, he was still impressed by the depths of the precautions. They would definitely protect against a more limited infiltration.

The screen flashed a new message.

Would you like this session to continue with Private or Public settings?

Curiously, he selected private.

Private session selected.

---Switching to off-line power.

---Turning off monitoring.

---Safety precautions disabled.

---Additional scrying wards implemented. 

*Note, if excessive healing energy is required on-line power may need to be re-enabled. 

Tom’s eyebrows rose at the safety precautions being disabled. He hadn’t known that the isolation rooms had such a feature, but, in hindsight, it wasn’t that surprising.

How long would you like this session to last?

There were numerous options listed under the question that ranged from five minutes to a full eight hours.

Tom smiled in relief. This room would be perfect for him, and, to test the situation fully, he selected the shortest period possible.

The room locked, and, almost immediately, Tom regretted pressing the button. Five minutes when you wanted to be out killing stuff was a long time. On another night, he would be back to start training his resistances in earnest, but not now.

Today he had orcs to kill, and he nearly ran out the door when it finally unlocked, such had been the buildup of his boredom.

Fifteen minutes later, he stood armed and ready at the threshold to the orc lair.

This was not the first time he had come down here, and he understood the enemy in detail. They were a different type of threat than the bats. The orcs were powerful, at least to someone at his level, even if they were slow even by Earth standards. Most healthy adults on Earth without access to the attribute boost that Existentia brought would have been able to defeat these monsters in a one on one battle, providing they didn’t panic and they weren’t fighting one of the orcs with an actual skill. 

Tom wasn’t an adult. He was in a child’s body, which made the clashes problematic. They needed a different strategy and layout than what he had chosen against the bats. Fighting these creatures without armour would be a mistake. The orcs with skills could occasionally move so fast that fully evading their attacks was a pipe dream. But nor could he wear a full set of armour, because attempting to do so would slow him too much. His compromise was a mixed leather and metal breastplate, which covered the vitals. It was to stop attacks that could do lethal damage to his torso, but nothing else.

With Touch Heal fully operational, even outcomes like losing an arm did not trouble him. If he got the arm quick enough, he could reattach it. Against this particular type of opponent Spark, represented a get out of jail card not to mention the powerful protection Dimitri had gifted him. In the context of those advantages, the relatively light armour made sense.

Two steps would take him into the lair, and, before he began, he utilised his Dampen Senses ring. Instantly, smell and hearing vanished, and he also shut his eyes. He would go in blind in the truest sense of the words to train his skills further. With none of the normal five senses guiding him, he strode forward, confident that his abilities were going to protect him. His Advanced Danger Sense would not stop him from walking into a wall, but there were half-formed skills at play that would help him. Tom had tested the limits of that sense, and it was impressive. Logically, it worked, but he couldn’t bring himself to fully trust it fully. As he strode forward, he swung his spear ahead of him like a blind man would, but, despite him walking through twisted tunnels for over ten minutes, his spear never touched anything.

He had a sixth sense for where the walls were, even if nothing had crystallised into an ability.

Abruptly, Danger Sense spiked.

Without hesitation, he sprang to the side while using Psychic Tracking on the beast that was attacking him. Its shoulder brushed against his elbow as it rushed past him, almost spinning him off his feet.

He winced, then registered a second spike of warning and threw himself forward. He tagged the new monster, and then he was tracking two enemies simultaneously. There didn’t seem to be a third, which was good, because his skill was limited to two opponents at the current point in time. Psychic Tracking was only good to highlight an opponent’s centre of mass, but that gave him enough of an advantage against these monsters to allow him to fight them blind. With light feet, forcing his eyes to remain tightly shut, he started dancing between the enemies. Knowledge built-up from weeks of fighting this specific monster type allowed him to predict their movements. His spear swung to intercept blows, and then, when he guessed there would be an opening, he would stab forward with his version of Power Strike, making every blow far more deadly than they would otherwise be.

The small wounds Tom blindly delivered added up, and, after four minutes, one of them finally succumbed to their injuries. With only a single opponent to contend with, Tom ramped his aggression up, and the second died shortly after.

The entire fight had lasted a little over five minutes, and he was breathing heavily. It had been a successful bout, but not a perfect one. He had suffered two injuries. One had been a graze on his leg with the only notable damage being that inflicted upon his clothes. The second one, however, had been more serious. He had only partially blocked a skill-empowered strike, and the sword had gotten through. It had hurt his chest area, and he was breathing shallowly as a result. The blow had struck him in the middle of his chest and done significant damage to his breastplate. His probing fingers found dented metal and split leather in a gash that was over ten centimetres long. It stretched from his sternum to his shoulder. A combination of touch and the diagnosis ability that was coupled with his healing allowed him to find and draw out the leather that had been pushed under his skin line.

Pulling the leather slithers out without anaesthetic hurt enough that he had to clench his jaw to stop himself from crying out, but in a few moments it was over and then his healing magic removed the injury and the pain. The breast plate was not ruined but now had a significant area of weakness that he would have to monitor and protect during the coming fights.

For a battle against only two orcs, it was not an auspicious start to his training.

Frowning, he continued forward while reviewing the fight. Technically, his performance had been far better than the injury suffered had implied. There was no single moment, including when he got hurt, where he had better options available. Given his handicaps and limited skills, he had done as well as he could ever have expected to do so.

Maybe I was pushing myself too hard, he mused to himself. Then he shook his head at that thought. Nope, he decided. A few scratches in the name of training were perfectly acceptable. Even if the sword blow had nearly reached to the bone, it hadn’t quite made it, and he trusted Danger Sense to react earlier to protect him if his life was ever truly in danger.

As though his thoughts had summoned it, Danger Sense blared almost at full volume, indicating a stronger enemy – or, more likely, a group of enemies - were about to assault him.

Tom, acutely aware of the risk of hostile fate being weaponised against him, immediately opened his eyes to equalise the odds against whatever he was facing. The illuminous moss in these caves was dense, which, while not providing light as such, did enough to frame the four enemy silhouettes that were coming at him. There were two spear users, a sword and shield orc, and, finally, one wielding an axe. He was in one of the larger caves, as that was the only place the mobs of monsters congregated. The cavern was five metres high and circular, and almost twenty metres across, which gave it a similar area to a basketball court, even if it had a different shape. The monsters had started on the other side, and all four were rushing him.

Clinically, he focused on making the use of his spear forms. He danced around the creatures, using his superior speed compared to that of the hulking brutes to make sure he wasn’t cornered. This was training, so he deliberately used the quick step technique every chance he got. Without a skill backing it, the motion was a hindrance to the battle, as it interrupted the precise footwork that experts had developed over thousands, if not millions, of hours, but he did it anyway. A little inefficiency now was an acceptable cost for long-term gain.

The orcs were stupid, and, very quickly, he managed to position himself so only one could threaten him. Without hesitation, he flexed Spark. His magic zapped the orc immediately after it had lunged at him. The electricity struck the leading leg, and caused all of the muscles in the thigh area to spasm. It was a minor impediment, but it distracted it for a moment and prevented it from stepping back neatly to a spot where the others could cover it.

He used the quarter of a second his magic had bought him to lunge forward. His Power Strike-enhanced spear ripped out the creature’s throat. Then, as he danced backwards, the mortally wounded orc followed him for three steps before collapsing to its knees, its brain shutting down in seconds because no blood was reaching it.

The fight was reduced to three on one, and, without the self-imposed handicap to his vision, it was an easy fight. The orcs were slow, and had no resistances against lightning magic. A few more carefully placed bolts in the midst of the spinning, flashing, and striking weapons turned the remainder of the fight into a forgone conclusion. One tripped, and his spear went through its eye; another lost its sword as its hand spasmed at the same time as Tom parried a blow. The force of their weapons colliding along with its fumble sent the blade clattering away. Lacking a weapon, even with the defence of its shield, it was easy to conquer. The last one, the axe fighter, died shortly after, because a one-on-one between him and an orc was not a fair contest. While they outranked him, his technical skill level was so much higher that ending the fight was simple.

Tom smiled at the end of the battle, and then shut his eyes once more and continued on his way. There were more orcs to kill. More training to complete. As he hunted his next prey, he hoped that he would mostly find singles and duos, because he really wanted to advance his blind fighting abilities.