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CH 101: Results
🕑 Added 2025-03-07 15:00:21 +0000 UTC[ This whole time, they tricked me. The doubling in the points I gain and the bonuses they shell out was never about me finding some wonderful loophole. Pathfinder just made the best of a bad situation. My contract is based on the creation of a new 'framework' that Blasdej gets to license. I've had to type this message out six times to get around the informational limit, but fuck it - I'll do it a seventh if it rejects this one. There's no one else I can tell this to. Not out loud. They've been willing to over-invest in me, because they can use my growth and that framework to 'offer' new and more exploitative contracts. It makes me sick. Fuck them all. I'll go back to playing my part for them tomorrow - tonight I just want to be pissed off. Deep down, I'd felt proud of my progress. It felt like the one thing that was truly mine - with one asterisk that you had helped start me off. I could be fine with that one asterisk. I'm not fine with this. ]
In the nine weeks since Nyx went into hibernation, their trio had continued to train.
At first, Reid let himself fall down another message-unlocking slope. Win and Lycra had both pretended not to notice his sorry state - which he was incredibly grateful for. Reid made the promise to himself that he'd never again start the day by deciphering one. Instead, he switched to making it the last thing he did before resting. Not the last thing he did before a day ended, but before the rest itself. It was agonizing - knowing he was so close sometimes to getting one unlocked outright instead of just making progress towards that goal. But he pushed himself on and held himself accountable with the same drive and dedication that would see him reunite with her someday.
The recent messages had almost all been complaints about Blasdej. There was an undercurrent of hate there - a desire for retribution. It left Reid with the understanding that once he was strong enough to stand up to the consortium, there was a good chance his daughter would be more than happy to join at his side and knock a few of their heads. But opposite her feelings on progression, Reid was proud of what he'd been able to accomplish.
It started off slow, certainly, but Nyx's lessons were an excellent foundation that he'd used to build himself up bit by bit.
He compared rocks like a geologist - turning them in his hands, licking the surfaces, breaking them apart, and studying where they seemed to appear or be missing from the walls. He compared weight, toughness, and even malleability. He stared and wondered and tried to perceive deeper meanings from them until his eyes swam and his head complained - and then he pushed himself even further on. Real progress didn't really start until he'd properly looked at the walls.
The moles had clawed away every inch of space at the edges of the den, and the marks they left told a story. Near hard black rock, other seashell-like swipes would look shaky or off - like the material had caused the moles to break a claw on the rough and tough surface. Some swipes were obviously deeper than others, and the softer rock was dug into more deeply than the rest. Points flowed in as he rectified his understanding of the individual types of rock with the impact they'd had on the den's creation.
His next forays into perception focused on trash. He rummaged through the piles and worked to understand how they may have deformed, broken, and deteriorated. A dent on a metal pipe was just the right size to have been caused by an arm slamming into it at great force. A chest made of extremely durable wood was peppered with holes because the king had detonated a black-rock boulder right next to the thing. There were more junk-like shields than ornate ones because the party in question let the chaff die off first in their attempted retreat.
Reid pushed himself through more physical and metaphysical repetition to raise dexterity until his very bones and essence ached. He increased his speed up the rope ladder in his metaspace, and even started playing around with balance beams and weights. The work was entirely draining - but also inherently rewarding. It gave him slightly more ability to delicately control the flows of his energy with each increase he eked out of himself. He continued to sock away more 'perfect' motions in his mind palace.
In his mind palace, Reid organized until his head felt like it was going to implode. Doing that or working with the strings in his 'threadspace' - which was a term he would use whether Nyx agreed with it or not - for any extended period of time gave him the absolute worst goddamn headache. Even with that drawback, his progress made things easier in almost every other area. He could record and remember information more easily, which meant he didn't have to stare at a rock quite as long to realize what was going on with it - or he could better define which metaphysical muscle group he needed to contort.
The more his intelligence grew, the more Reid realized that just organizing wasn't quite enough to set himself up for continued success. References and links and conjunctive learnings were just as important as organized shelves. It meant he had to re-sort things and make those connections and links himself as that new information poured itself into him - or the influx tended to pile up and create new mess. So, the mind palace had an outsized impact on his ability to make gains in other areas - but it also carried natural maintenance requirements that increased in tandem with his overall level of growth. In Reid's eyes, every second he spent playing librarian and researcher was worth it.
As he grew and trained and studied and tested, Reid made sure to make the most of every day to further his understanding of vitality.
Every state of dehydration or starvation or energy depletion was used as an opportunity. There was no better way of learning how your body recovered than to force it to do so while you watched. Reid saw his lips fill back in with moisture, and saw the acidic byproducts of his muscles get pulled away. He witnessed how the slow cycles immediately following energy depletion warmed up the 'pathways' to let greater amounts of mana through without burning the pathways with the high load. It gave him ideas on how to grow and improve, how to work inside his kitchen metaspace, and how to get himself to a point of finer and better control.
The only thing he'd 'failed' in with vitality was getting his resource stores to fully listen to him. No matter what he did, the things would automatically empty themselves once he hit a certain level of exhaustion. He would've preferred to have them conserve the energy they contained until Reid chose to release it - but he understood some of why it wasn't working. His body's ultimate goal was to stay alive, and if Reid were unconscious or indisposed or incapable, he wouldn't be able to actively tell himself to release the nutrients and energy. His attempts at owning the process had strayed too far, and he was playing with safety switches instead of making real progress. Still, it was only after losing four days to those tests that he'd finally moved on.
When he'd made a comfortable level of advancement in other areas, Reid also allowed himself to go back into his power metaspace. There were no additions quite so grand as the beach - and replicating that feat would be quite impossible with the progress left to be gained. Still, Reid was proud of his additions. An umbrella, a towel, and a handful of curated seashells had joined the plastic toys in the sand - and a kite without a string floated high overhead.
Despite his natural ability for and affinity towards power, it hadn't been the first stat Reid maxed out completely.
That milestone went to dexterity.
Once his lowest stat, Reid had put the most focus and attention into growing his Dexterity after Nyx's 'departure'. His repetition saw him hit that same familiar 'hill' feeling with the physical side of things fairly early on into the 9-week, self-guided progression. While he could still train and internalize his movements, Reid could feel that his progress in doing so wouldn't have an impact on his overall level of ability. There weren't any specific swings, stances, or moves that he was dying to perfect, so Reid moved on to the metaphysical.
It took a bit longer, but Reid also found the limit in his metaspace - which was the first metaphysical limit he'd encountered out of all his stats. The sensation wasn't the same 'hill' he was looking for, but more like walking to the end of a line. It wasn't that something heavy impeded further progress. He could, technically, push himself farther forwards when he tried - but Reid's attempts weren't permanent. He'd always be 'drawn' back to the end of the line, like he was magnetized or pushing against some elastic thing that would always return him to 'normal'.
That sensation of being pulled 'back' to a 'lower' level of metaphysical progress was entirely unpleasant. When he'd first hit the end of the line in his Dexterity metaspace, he'd completely misunderstood what was happening, and pushed himself on for another few hours before letting himself stop. The feeling the regression gave him made Reid sick. After that, he paid more attention to that sense of the 'end of the line', and ensured he never moved to the point where he was pushing on the elastic.
The second maxed stat was perception. In an unintended move, Reid's work to better control and understand his bodily processes for vitality had turned into a day-long introspective investigation. Where his prior focus had been on the resources and the stores themselves or the way they were applied once he stopped and rested, this time around he'd put his attention squarely on the parts of his body that were weakening and complaining for more to eat and consume. Watching himself wither was something he simply hadn't done before - he had always been doing something that caused the expenditure, and so wasn't able to see the process in action. The understanding that came with seeing the entirety of the fuel-use-expend-rest cycle within his body gave Reid a double-digit point gain in perception that put him slightly over the edge of the metaphysical line. A bit of a queasy stomach was nothing in exchange for his unintentional gain.
The third was constitution. Ending every other session with a focus on vitality saw Reid spend great amounts of time within his kitchen metaspace, and he had made progress in understanding how it worked and what to do. He still didn't have more burners on the stove - nor was he rocking a full sized fridge - but Reid understood what 'ingredients' he needed to use to most effectively pick himself back up after he wore himself out. The body modification portion of constitution felt like hopping back on a bicycle - and honestly felt almost too easy compared to the effort he'd been putting into everything else.
His fourth maxed stat was intelligence. Not because he was really good with it, but because he'd chosen to hold off on the physical portion of power until he perfected everything else. Intelligence proved to be his toughest gains. They came slowly, painfully, and arduously. Hours in organization mode were only met with single digit impacts. A day spent linking thoughts and information barely made an indent in his rise. It helped his other stats, for sure - but Reid struggled to get it to move on its own. The vast majority of his last few weeks had focused entirely on raising intelligence, and it was only very recently that he'd capped off his progress. The final points were gained when he'd furthered his understanding of how the status screen string worked in the threadspace.
Power was saved for last. It was the first real area where he'd made gains, and the one still closest to his sense of self. And while Nyx's teaching about moving between different spaces to lessen the load and pain of self improvement were true, Reid ignored her lesson so he could earn his last 2.5 points of power the same way he'd built up his first self-improvements.
It was more nostalgia and reverence than masochism. He re-welcomed the old, familiar pain and burning progress as his muscles and body swelled and grew. Reid reveled in the visceral feedback as his biceps, triceps, and quads built within him. He felt energy swirl and warm. He knew why overworking those specific areas was creating the excess painful sensations. He could tell how leaving one muscle strengthened without doing the rest would throw off his sense of balance within his catalogued movements. He pressed on with the inefficient method all the same - proud that he knew so much more about himself, and proud that he was still the same person willing to burn and ache for those two and a half points.
When Reid finished the work and pulled back out of himself, he would've sworn he breathed in new, fresh air.
He felt different. The world felt different.
Nyx had left him with the directive to aim for a balance in stats going into F grade, and Reid was ready to achieve just that.
He opened his status, and smiled.
STATUS
Name: Ser Reid Oliver Calderwall [Serroc]
Affiliation: "Earth" [Hidden]
Race: Human [Vuxarinan]
Grade: G
Level: 24 [Hidden]
Health: 1195 / 1300
Experience: 411,429,200 / 419,430,400
STATS:
Constitution: 97.5 -> 130
Dexterity: 85 -> 130
Intelligence: 56 -> 130
Perception: 87 -> 130
Power: 112.5 -> 130
Control: 130
Stat Upgrade Points: ERROR
SKILLS:
Strengthening [Basic]
Identify [Basic]
Hardening [Common]
Darkvision [Common]
Calcification [Uncommon]
Accelerated Growth [Undefined] (.08)
Skill Upgrade Points: ERROR
ENHANCEMENTS:
Osteal Smithing Journeyman (Calcification)
RESISTANCES:
Substances - Sedatives
Active Skill Effects - (Negative)
Identify - (Partial + Falsification)
ACCOLADES:
Titles:
[Honorary Knight]
Achievements:
[Pesticide, Regicide, Mercy Kill, Challenger, Lone Agent, Magnanimous Leader, Grade Jumper]
RESTRICTED:
???: UNAVAILABLE
