The process of buying Stats was the same as usual. After Anise repaid Felix’s Achievement loan, everyone ramped up our Stats to sixty. Our stats were now completely identical to each other, at least before including things like runes or items that modified stats.
Of the three of us who needed to finish buying stats, I paid the least. I had seven stats that were previously at +40 and three that had already reached +60. To push a stat up one point, I needed 130 Achievement, and each stat needed 20 points to bring it up to the maximum level Tier 3 soul fragments could get to. In total, that cost me 18,200 Achievement.
If this had been one of our previous visits to the Market, I would have flinched at such a big Achievement cost. 18,200 Achievement was a massive amount, and paying it would have been ruinously difficult if I wanted to balance that with ability costs and also save for potential upgrades in the inner district of the Market.
Fortunately, that was no longer the case. Yet again, I was reminded of just how much our situation had changed due to the last world. While part of me felt bad for profiting off of the monstrous deeds of the corporation who had made our last world the way it was, I was also glad that we’d found a chance to turn things around. I barely even noticed the dip in Achievement as I grabbed soul fragments like a madwoman and shoveled them down, one after another. The costs dropped me from 275,532.82 Achievement to 257,332.82 Achievement. In exchange, all of my stats increased to a uniform 160, not including my boosts from runes. More importantly, my Glut penalty also went up. The upgrades to my stats gave me a total of 48 more Glut Penalty to work with, bringing my total to 155. That meant it was time to grab my other Ability Evolutions and new abilities, since I now had 50 free glut to work with.
The first thing I did was handle my ability evolution for my absorption essence ability. I didn’t see much reason to change my original decision for which upgrade to go with. Having runes that had no maintenance cost was a huge improvement in my overall strength, especially when combined with the {Brand of Miria}. The item and the ability upgrade were so powerful together that taking a different evolution option would just be silly.
Direction 2: Hope for the Hopeless Cost: 10,000 Achievement Glut penalty: 32 -> 35 Previously, this world was in a hopeless state. No matter what you did, it was unlikely that you could have realistically reversed its course - a gradual decline, ending in the extinction of sentient life in this world. However, you used your rune abilities to bring hope to a world that had none left. This will add the ‘Hope’ keyword to your Ability (you may avoid adding this keyword and leave it as a fragmented keyword, if you so desire. However, the glut cost will increase by 25 points). Effects: Runes will no longer cost any essence at all to maintain, but only so long as your actions are ‘heroic.’ The standards for acting ‘heroic’ are based on how much hope you inspire in the hearts of other people. In other words, if people believe that you will make the world better, or you have helped people in their darkest times, you will be considered ‘heroic’ for the judgement of this Ability. Furthermore, the more hope you have inspired, the faster and easier it will be for you to develop more runes. |
I did not choose to leave ‘hope’ as a fragmented keyword, which pushed me to eight out of ten keyword slots filled again. I now suspected that I would not be picking up another keyword ability - I would probably fill my last keyword slots with a few more ability evolutions at some point instead. That was fine with me.
Three of my fifty remaining Glut penalty disappeared… and in exchange, the subtle drain of my runes on my essence reserves vanished. I now had 10 runes, and none of them cost me a single drop of essence to maintain. I grinned.
The ‘feeling’ of this Ability wasn’t as obvious as it had been for my Eldritch keyword ability. I suspected it was because I hadn’t done anything particularly ‘heroic’ since acquiring this ability. I was a bit surprised that my actions were deemed ‘heroic’ already - but then again, I was actively working to keep my friends and I alive. Even if I was only impacting four people, I was inspiring some amount of hope by working with my friends to survive.
I smiled as I thought about how much further I could take my rune ability now. Next world, I hoped we ended up as a species with a crazy long lifespan again. If we did, I was going to go nuts forming as many runes as I could. I had ten right now. I intended to redo my third rune next time I got the chance, so it would take me a bit of time to fix that into a more combat-oriented ability. I would also think about whether I wanted to revise any other runes for our big fight - but I was excited to see how far I could push my runes next time.
I turned my attention to my other abilities that I had earned over the last life. There were quite a few of them, but at the end of the day, our own thoughts about what to do after this kept coming back to me. We had talked about buying a bunch more stats, and then potentially hunting down a few useful generic abilities from the Market. It was also distinctly possible that I would need some glut open for other boosts that we might find in the inner districts of the nursery. I had thought of a few different abilities that I wouldn’t mind having… but how many of them were actually worth their glut cost?
After some hesitation, I decided to only pick up the Ability that had impressed me. The one I genuinely thought could make a big difference, not only in our next life, but during the fight for more lives as well.
Since you have raised your understanding of your Attunement to Master grade for the first time, you have earned a new Skill! Upon your death, you will have the option to purchase [Master of Shaping] as an ability, for the cost of 10,000 Achievement. This Ability has the following effects: |
Keywords: None It becomes several times easier to reach {Basic}, {Intermediate}, and {Advanced} grade for your attunement. After that, this bonus will become weaker, until it completely disappears after Heroic grade. Every single advancement in your attunement will increase your Alteration attribute by 10 points, and your mental stats will all receive a +5 bonus as well. Alteration essence-fueled spells will receive a slight reduction in essence cost. Glut Penalty: 15 |
It was another 10,000 Achievement, and another 15 Glut penalty - but in this case, I felt it was well worth the cost. So I grabbed the Ability. My open glut dropped to 32. Not bad at all. My Achievement dropped to 237,332.82, since I had paid 10,000 Achievement for each of my two abilities. Like the ‘hope for the hopeless’ ability evolution, I didn’t feel very different right after acquiring this Ability. The only major difference I felt was my attunement. Despite having formed it several times already, I was still used to needing a little bit of effort to reach basic-grade again when rebuilding my attunement and re-enabling my alteration spells. Now, it felt like the barrier locking me out of basic grade for my attunement was as thin as paper. With some surprise, I realized that I no longer needed to concentrate on my alteration essence to rebuild my basic grade attunement - I could rebuild it even while moving around, and I would probably rebuild it within a day or two. I wondered if I could do the same thing for Intermediate and advanced grade. If I could sleepwalk my way into higher grades of attunement, it would make the eventual goal of hitting heroic much easier.
I smiled again at the thought, before I turned to my friends. They had also finished purchasing their soul fragments, and the shop didn’t have anything else useful or interesting for us. It didn’t even have any Achievement in the cash registers - some other group of transmigrators must have raided it before us.
“All right, I got my abilities,” I said. “Both of you finished rounding out your stats, right?” I asked, as I turned towards Sallia and Anise. The two of them nodded. “Then we have options now. First, we can charge straight towards an inner district of the nursery. Second, we can try to find a shop that sells Tier four or higher soul fragments, and try to power up a bit more before we head for the inner districts.”
“I like the idea of going for Tier 4 soul fragments. It would give us a much bigger margin of safety when things get dangerous,” said Felix. “It felt like we were dancing on a tightrope last time. The sheer speed difference made it very hard to manage the fight. We have Achievement to burn right now. It would be a waste not to use it. Of course, if we can’t find a shop selling what we need, we’ll abandon the plan. How about we try searching for a week or two, and if we don’t have any luck, we re-evaluate?”
I thought about it, and nodded. Felix’s reasoning seemed solid to me. I turned towards Sallia and Anise to see if either of them objected, but they nodded in agreement. “Sounds good,” I said. “Let’s start searching shops.”