A Relatively Powerful Mage

With several weeks remaining before the auction, Imri resumed his grinding. Unfortunately, the Drakes had learned to avoid the plateau, and he now needed to travel over a dozen kilometers before he found his typical quarry. However, with his mana regeneration able to completely replenish his entire pool in less than a day, he was willing to cast spells to mitigate the distance.

While the primary objective of these hunts was now almost strictly financial, Imri still hoped to gain a key rank-up: Dimensional Portal. He used the spell to transport him to the hunting grounds along with a small team of porters. The porters weren’t strictly necessary, with Imri opening a return portal after each kill. However, even saving him precious minutes of his time was worth a small share of the materials.

Imri even tried a few new tricks with his portals. The first was to create a portal leading directly into the side of the nearest cliff face, essentially creating a solid wall in an instant. At the speed at which the Drakes dove, it was like a bird slamming into an unexpected window. This also had the benefit of stunning the resilient creature without damaging materials.

The second method of using the portal as a weapon was why he insisted on adding numerous safety features to his enchantment versions of the spell. It didn’t require any specific location for the portal, so he had the two horizons only meters apart. When the Drake was partially through the event horizon, Imri would release his control on the spell. Spacetime would return to its unaltered state, uncaring that it had separated two halves of a previous whole. The bisected Drake would continue its uncontrolled dive even more haphazardly, though it always survived the ensuing plummet. Dispatching them at that point was trivial, something even the porters could handle with a Dimensional Saber.

Despite these methods being both clever and efficient, they still proved insufficient to rank up his spell. Imri was disappointed, even though that result had been the expected one, with the spell ranking up during his evacuation of the event center in New Chicago.

His time spent enchanting was likewise a grind. His mind wandered as he wanted to work on enchantmenting the plane. Unfortunately, he had more urgent priorities. Avery, Toby, and Zuri hadn’t been idle while he was gone, and a backlog of panels was ready to be enchanted. Imri rushed through them to get it over with as fast as possible. While he would be missing out on a small percentage of mana generation with the rush job, there was too much work to waste time maximizing individual panels. Even with the comparatively sloppy workmanship, they still produced more mana than his previous attempts, thanks to the higher rank in his profession and improved stats from becoming a count.

That was only the beginning of the work that needed to be done. His improved design using sending and receiving runes was ready to be incorporated into all of his previous enchantments. Unfortunately, this meant enchanting an entire inventory from nothing, as Runic Refresh only improved the quality, not the design. He enchanted items feverishly, working from what he considered the most universally applicable to more niche items last. He aimed to have a few of each item available in his store. However, it turned out that he was simply pumping out Temporal Expansion enchantments nonstop, as he couldn’t keep them in stock. He probably was undercharging for his items, but they were already out of reach for the average citizen, and Imri didn’t want to cater to the elites exclusively. The solution was simple: make more inventory.

Fortunately, the system recognized his efforts, increasing his rank in the aptly named achievement Mass Produced. Likewise, the crafting binge gave him a single level in his Runic Engineer profession. Furthermore, his agility increased by a point from all the fine detail work he had consistently done. While these were welcome improvements, none dramatically altered his stats. They also paled in comparison to a welcome ability increase that he received for his efforts.

Trait Rank Up

Runic Etching E to D

Runic Etching has improved to Runic Replication

Runic Replication (2F): Inscribe runes faster without sacrificing efficiency, especially when working on familiar enchantments. Speed of inscribing runes increased by 1.1% / 10 Agility. This effect is increased by 10% per time the exact enchantment has previously been produced up to a max of 100%.

Runic Replication was just what he needed to reduce his backlog. While it was only marginally improved when implementing new designs, most of his time was spent pumping out proven commodities, where the improvements were noticeable. His hands blurred as he mechanically worked without taking breaks. His focus and patience had also reached inhuman levels, allowing him to craft nonstop without noticeable mental fatigue.

His massive store of cores dwindled as he produced dozens of enchantments daily. He was far from exhausting it entirely, but his assumption that this resource would last for years was quickly shattered. He also wasn’t the only one who had a use for the high-level cores, as numerous other crafters had inquired about purchasing some of his supply. For the right price, he sold a small percentage of his supply. He got around 25,000 credits from the average Drake core, an easily attainable material for him. Still, he only sold a few who were trying to the crafters attempting masterpiece-level items. The system store was a more practical solution for everything else, even if the readily available cores weren’t as effective. Imri somewhat regretted not demanding a more significant percentage of the Azala cores that had been recovered after the battle for New Chicago. However, he wanted the majority to remain with the city, which would hopefully help jumpstart their economy. Besides, he had still claimed a hundred higher-level cores; he just hadn’t expected them to be used up in several days.

The final part of the day was spent training to improve his attributes and abilities. However, this now included more than simple exercises. He had meant what he said to Professor Dotson, wanting to implement a more system-focused regimen. While the complete program was still far from ready for an official roll-out, some takeaways were immediately apparent.

First, many starting traits were attainable without a relevant class. This was still relatively rare, as most people used the proficiencies already granted to them. It also didn’t appear easy to get, requiring more than a few days of practicing with the desired proficiency. However, Imri hoped that with a more deliberate approach, people would have a more comprehensive array of abilities. While they didn’t have enough data points to be certain, Imri strongly suspected that acquiring new abilities had similar rules to ranking up existing ones. The main rule was that training it against stronger enemies would grant the ability faster. Sylvi’s explanation of how she had acquired Light Weapon Proficiency and Dodge by fighting Umbral Tigers was consistent with that theory.

That brought Imri to his next conclusion: the abilities could only be unlocked by using the ability almost exclusively. Put another way, the result only mattered when the process that produced the result aligned with the desired ability. This was why Imri hadn’t unlocked the Dodge trait; he had dodged plenty of attacks but had done so by using his spells and enchantments, not his natural agility. If Imri wanted to gain the trait, he would need to fight without his existing abilities. The final result also mattered as someone who was naturally agile and capable of dodging attacks intuitively gained a far greater amount of progress toward unlocking the trait. This was similar to how he had been intuitively able to learn spells faster, even accounting for his traits that augmented that directly. Applied at scale, people would naturally have more abilities that used their highest attributes, even if nothing explicitly stopped someone from getting abilities related to their lowest attributes.

The next conclusion should have been obvious, based on the wording of starting traits: they improved the corresponding attribute to gain abilities. This reinforced his theory that the Dodge trait progresses faster for someone with greater agility. It also had another implication: nothing prevented anyone from learning spells, attacks, or other abilities unrelated to the broad specializations their class granted them. Imri had several spells unrelated to space and time, having gained basic spells for light, sound, and heat. Taken to the extreme, it meant that anyone could gain the same spells with enough aptitude and time. It also meant that two people starting with the same class would eventually have diverging abilities based on their chosen pursuits.

He wondered what the limit of gaining abilities was. He doubted anyone could learn his Manifest Domain or Inner Domain abilities, no matter how much time they spent. He wasn’t as sure about some of his class and profession abilities. If someone had a universally applicable skill or trait, it would certainly warrant further experimentation.

The next category of abilities was resistance. Only a few people had gained these, and most had gotten the resistance relating to their element. Avery had one such ability, having gained the Heat Resistance trait from spending enough time working metals and his fire magic. Imri also included the broader Toughness trait, which appeared to be gained from taking damage. Imri was likely on the cusp of getting this one, considering how many times he had almost died. After speaking with the people who had managed to get it, he realized they had similar near-death experiences but also numerous less severe injuries that came from being a frontline fighter. Imri also noticed they all had significantly above-average constitutions, even relative to other soldiers.

Unfortunately, the apparent exploit of inflicting self-harm had already been proven ineffective. Like the proficiency traits, the system appeared to award the most progress from effective usage with consequences for failure, the obvious extreme being combat against a powerful foe. While they could artificially train up resistances, their healers didn’t have the resources to waste on self-inflicted wounds. Most people were relieved when it was decided that what amounted to torture was not an effective training regimen. However, there was one resistance that Imri thought was a necessity when facing mind-controlling parasites.

Unfortunately, no one had gained general resistance to mental attacks, and few people could help the army acquire that specific resistance. The one person Imri had thought of was a very reluctant instructor.

Imri had spent several conversations trying to convince Emelia. After days of badgering her, she reluctantly agreed.

‘Are you sure this is the only way? Couldn’t I use less negative emotions?’ Emelia sent as they approached the group of trainees. The group was nearly a hundred people, containing all the elites, including Sylvi and his brother.

‘They need to have consequences for failure and an objective to strive towards besides simply enduring the effects. In addition, everyone here agreed to do whatever was necessary to grow stronger, and we explicitly mentioned that some things would be unpleasant,’ Imri explained.

While this was just conjecture on his part, Imri was confident it was correct; he just wasn’t sure to what degree. Still, it was better than not trying, and they needed to find the system's boundaries to exploit it.

This particular training regimen was designed to teach people two essential abilities. The first was Meditation, a skill Imri used daily. They had found someone who had taught the skill before the integration, though their skill level hadn’t progressed further than Imri’s. The instructor was a priest of Edea, the healing goddess whose believers congregated around the spring.

Once they received the priest’s instructions, they would practice the skill, with one unconventional difference. They would attempt to remain serene while Emelia manipulated their emotions. Imri also included monetary rewards for everyone who could maintain a meditative state for the entire time to ensure everyone had as much incentive as possible.

Imri felt guilty as he sensed Emelia’s deep worry and unease as the meditation began. It wasn’t hard for her to dredge up negative emotions in such a state, and she used Project Emotion on the entire group. Most trainees immediately lost their concentration, but none outright gave up. Emelia released the spell and waited, not having the mana to keep the spell running constantly. She would flare the spell at intermittent intervals, distracting those who weren't prepared and shattering their Meditation.

At the end of the session, everyone was mentally exhausted and moody from the emotions they had experienced. The results of the training were mixed. A handful of people had gained or improved their Meditation skills, but most of that was through the instructor's guided meditation rather than the practice while Emelia messed with their minds. Only a handful of people managed to secure the monetary reward, which was only a hundred credits. Imri noticed that most of them were priests of Edea, each of whom possessed a high Willpower.

Despite not seeing immediate results, they continued this practice for several more days. When Imri debated discontinuing the training, a couple of priests got a new trait. Imri immediately recognized them, as they had been among those who had succeeded every time. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been the exact trait Imri had hoped for. It was called Emotional Stability, which increased their effective willpower when resisting an effect that altered an emotion.

While it hadn’t been precisely what Imri had hoped for, he considered it a success. He had two theories for why it hadn’t been mind resistance. The first was that Emelia’s spell effect wasn’t severe enough to be considered mind magic. He considered this analogous to Avery’s heat resistance, which wouldn’t do anything against being burned. His other theory was that training against one specific type of effect wouldn’t give broader resistance. Instead, it would only resist that particular effect, in this case, emotional manipulation.

Imri also found it noteworthy that the priests had been the first to gain the trait. He easily would have gotten it first if it was solely based on who resisted the effects. Unfortunately, there were too many variables to make a definitive conclusion. Still, he suspected the spell was too easy for Imri to resist, so he didn’t get the full benefit of the training. It also wasn’t strictly a matter of willpower, as others were just above and below the priests' attribute value. What the priests did have was a level of emotional awareness and serenity that exceeded their attributes, though that was hard to quantify.

The training was also a success for Emelia, who managed to rank up her Project Emotion spell with its constant use on many people. It had improved to Manipulate Emotions, making it slightly more effective while no longer requiring Emelia to have the emotional state she was evoking.

With the results of this experiment, Imri began to contemplate what other methods they could use to develop their abilities further. Unfortunately, he had other matters to attend to. He had just received word that Zhaire had returned.