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Arcanist - Chapter 9
🕑 Added 2025-03-09 11:20:38 +0000 UTCName: Valens Kosthal
Age: 22
Race: Human (Ancient)
Class: Arcane Healer (Ancient)
Level: 13
Experience: 11%
Trait: Resonance(Ancient)
Skills (7/10):
Lifesurge (Master) - lvl 2
Lifeward (Master) - lvl 2
Blockage (Master) - lvl 1
Fireball (Proficient) - lvl 4
Apathy (Master) - lvl 3
Inferno (Adept) - lvl 1
Gale (Master) - lvl 1
Stats:
Endurance - 10
Vitality- 10
Strength - 10
Dexterity - 10
Intelligence - 40
Wisdom - 15
Free Points: 60
General Skills (3/10):
Laran Language
Identify(Basic)- lvl 1
Mana Manipulation (Master) - lvl 5
“What sorcery is this!” Valens’ breath caught in his throat when the words appeared before him. Horrified, he blinked to make sure if he’d indeed seen his own name amongst them.
Age, he could understand, as by relying on the frequencies of the world, he could, as a Resonant Healer, determine the age of his patients. He could even gauge a person's general strength by focusing on the density of frequencies: the muscle mass and the bones framing the body underneath, the weight of a step taken, the thrum of a heartbeat. Even a slight clench of one’s fingers had a song about it.
But his name…
It was there.
Valens Kosthal.
His first name, the only thing he had left from his parents who abandoned him to the streets. His last name, taken after Master Eldras when he rescued him from that orphanage and decided to take him as a disciple. He was barely five years old then, and he kept that surname as a secret his entire life.
But this System, or the terrifying Magus behind it, outright disclosed his name, as if mocking him in a way to show him how small he was. This shattering creation could see through him, and tap into the knowledge nestled in the depth of his brain.
He was a man with no secrets, now, not that he intended to keep anything from this… thing. But there was a certain dread to the feeling, of being toyed and jerked around, of being told his name in the most plain way possible.
What could he do?
He tapped into the Resonance to feel that outside influence, that touch of void around his brain. Nothing. He could absolutely feel nothing unordinary in the Resonance other than Nomad’s unique frequencies.
There was more.
If this thing was to be believed, and Valens sure started believing it the moment he saw his own name, then it had gauged his intelligence and wisdom as well.
How?
A name, you could utter without meaning to, and it would slip through your lips. One single time, then anyone would know it.
What about wisdom, though? Or intelligence? How could you even begin to quantify them in the first place?
If mastery over a certain topic could be seen as a part of one’s wisdom, then who could tell the depth of their wisdom with a single glance, and who could, indeed, quantify them in a way that could be reflected by simple numbers?
What did these numbers mean, anyway?
Valens shuddered.
Not only that, there was a certain obscurity to one’s own wisdom. Different from the primal brain, the intellectual part of the brain didn’t have the tendency to make itself known without deliberate effort, which meant that most knowledge one’s brain carried would often lie in a lull under the louder wavelengths of more prominent thoughts.
Even when the intellectual part of the brain took command of one’s thoughts, which happened quite often in social interactions, there was no real way to distinguish the thoughts from the general knowledge if you didn’t have a Lifeward drilled into the core of your brain that could catch the minute frequencies of thousands of different nerve lines coursing through the intricate parts of your inner being.
That brought a curious question to Valens’s mind, though. Now that Lifeward had become a skill he could use without relying on external tools, could he apply it to a patient’s brain to catch those silent tremors? If so, perhaps through intensive monitoring, he could map out how the frequencies of one’s mind acted in different situations.
Is this what this System is doing? Monitoring, at all times, the brain of each person in existence to keep track of their wisdom?
But if that was the case, what would it take to maintain such an egregious work? Worlds of mana, likely, and, if the assumption that everyone had a System in this world was true, a mind that was capable of keeping all beings in this world under strict surveillance. And, on top of that, the ability to trail all the frequencies and keep a tight control over them so whoever was behind this could let people know of their progress at all times.
Through a trick of floating words and numbers. It certainly makes it easier to follow.
Valens felt his mouth go dry. A shiver trickled slowly down his spine at the thought. This was beyond the means of an Archmagus. This was bordering disturbingly on the idea of an all-knowing god.
And there’s an Identify skill. Is this the reason why I can see the names of those creatures, and their levels as well? It must be tracking the frequencies of beings and fetching the name of the one that fits that particular Resonance from… where? A Library? Or a vault that hosts all the frequencies of the beings that have ever existed?
He froze as his eyes strayed down at the Free Points part. It didn’t take too long for him to make the connection.
“Then there has to be a way to use these points…” he muttered absently.
“What do you mean?” Nomad said, and it was then that Valens remembered he wasn’t alone in this cave. Right. He had an undead beside him, who was looking at him as if he’d lost it. “You just use them on the stats.”
“Are you saying that you can get more intelligent by giving a point to the Intelligence stat? Surely not!”
“That’s not how it works.” The undead shrugged and trailed a finger along the side of his sword. “Intelligence gives you mana, that stat, and I’ve been told it has more to do with potential. Like a bowl. Yes. The bowl grows with each stat put in Intelligence, and Wisdom lets you fill it. You ought to know that as a Mage Priest. These are your main stats, after all.”
“No!” Valens jabbed a finger into his face. “I refuse to believe it! I have worked all my life to become a better, albeit a little dangerous, but certainly more clever, Magus! I’ve earned it with my bare hands, and you can’t tell me that by simply giving some magical points into a magical stat that you could do the same!”
“Uh…” Nomad paused. “I told you it doesn’t work like that. It just gives you mana—“
“Why name it Intelligence, then? Why name it Wisdom?”
“How would I know?” Nomad ground his rotten teeth in frustration. “The System has always been there. It’s been there for thousands of years! If you’re so desperate to seek answers, you ain’t going to find them here. Not in this cave, and not under these bones.”
Valens pinched the bridge of his nose after his sudden outburst. He couldn’t blame the undead, but then, he couldn’t help but get a little furious at this Magus as well.
Wait… Could he be considered a Magus, at all, after all this? They said the First of the Magi was akin to a God, a Magus who could summon Meteors and crush the whole world if he wished to do so. A terrifying existence that could force his will across nature. All the more reason why it baffled Valens and his Master that he decided to seal the void.
Chances were, a similar person was at work here. A Magus who was close to the notion of an omniscient God. In other words, the First of the Magi equivalent of this world.
“I will try it,” Valens said at length, drawing a shivering breath. “I will see it for myself!”
“You can do it as long as you stop shouting like you’ve gone mad.”
Valens scowled. He was going to do it all right, but…
“How do I do it?” he asked. “How can I give a free point into the Intelligence stat?”
Nomad, much to his credit, seemed to have expected the question, as he tapped an armored finger to his helm. “Make a wish, and it’ll come true.”
“What?”
“Just think of giving a point in that stat,” Nomad sniggered. “Think about the amount you wanted to give, and then ask the System to do it.”
“Right.” Valens nodded. “Simple as that.”
“Simple as that.”
He began thinking about giving a single point to the Intelligence stat, but not before he managed a Lifeward across his body. He wanted to see if it would do anything to his being. Just like an experiment before making a decision he couldn’t get back. That was about how he went with most things.
A second later he was staring at the Intelligence stat with narrowed eyes.
Intelligence - 41
He barely felt a difference other than a slight poke at his chest. From within. That was the interesting part. It was as though a tiny little baby had jabbed him from within by his heart with a tiny little pinkie. He felt the touch around his chest cavity, underneath his ribcage. He tried to trail it with the Lifeward, only to pause.
There was nothing there. Nothing, as in, he couldn’t see through his chest cavity at all. His heart, his ribcage, his lungs, and the frequencies belonging to them were clear in the Resonance, but his chest cavity was one dark blank that lacked any song.
“That doesn’t make any sense. I should be able to see it,” he muttered, caring little whether Nomad heard him or not. He had more immediate questions needing answering to give a damn about some undead’s curiosity.
Another point to the Intelligence stat. That seemed like the only way to be sure of it. Then another. It was by the time he had dumped a whole ten stat points to the Intelligence that Valens started feeling a real change.
But this change didn’t happen where he expected. His chest cavity still remained a complete blank, but a stream of mana poured from inside of it, as if it suddenly materialized out of nowhere, and spilled into the mana source by his heart. Crashed into the still river of mana like a big block of ice.
Once there, it dissolved into specks of mana and stirred the river in action. Multiple waves rose from its depths, as high as the roof of his inner core, sloshing against the invisible boundaries with stubborn devotion. Valens watched, heart beating in his throat, as his full mana river carved an extra inch out of his body before going still, the waves easing slowly down and filling out into the newly opened space.
He waited for all the frequencies to calm to lay an ear over the Resonance. The wavelengths of his mana river seemed to have gained an almost joyous appreciation for being strengthened by additional sources.
It grew.
The mana source in his chest, the only way to cast his spells in this world, grew by an extra inch! If he had to make an assumption, ten points in Intelligence stat have given him about a five percent extra source.
Fingers blazed alive as he called for the Inferno, tongues of fire sprawling over him and sending a splash of heat across the ground.
“Have you really gone mad?” Nomad stepped back, one hand raised over his helm, the other clasping the sword tight. “We’re in a narrow stretch! You’re going to burn—“
“Just a test,” Valens waved him off. “I have to see it for myself.”
The change was slight, but noticeable. The sprawling waves of the Inferno had a different quality to them now. Just like how his inner source got an extra inch, the flames seemed to have gained a certain depth as well.
Their frequencies danced across the Resonance as Valens jerked the storm this way or that, feeling its heat by the tips of his fingers, watching how their crimson color reflected over the jagged walls of the cave.
The spell had grown strong. There was little doubt about it. But he frowned when the mana he was using for the spell wasn’t being replenished as fast as it used to. It was slower than before.
Likely since the source has grown wider.
“So that was what you meant when you gave me your clever bowl metaphor.” Valens nodded as he eyed the Wisdom stat while letting the Inferno dissolve into burning specks of embers. “Then, I can just pour some stats into the Wisdom to keep the renewing rate the same, right?”
Right. Such insidious simplicity that his skin crawled just when he thought what this thing could lead to. He could have a sea of mana inside his chest in the future, and set the whole world ablaze. Or, as his Healer side would suggest, heal all the sick in the world with a trick of his fingers.
“This shouldn’t be legal,” he said to Nomad, who shrugged at him. “I wonder how Strength, Endurance, and Dexterity work?”
He would have to take a look at them, too.
….
