Chapter 95: Information Intake
Erani, the Dryad, and I sat down and took a break so I could meditate and choose my new Intelligence benefit, whatever that meant. It really didn’t take long for us to backtrack enough to feel safe from those rock mining patrols we’d seen earlier, but in my anticipatory state, it felt like it took forever.
“What do you think your choices are gonna be?” Erani asked me as we settled down and ensured the surrounding area was safe.
“No clue,” I responded. “I mean, the Trailblazer Title says that it’ll ‘improve the information given to you by the System regarding your Class and what might become of it in the future.’ So presumably all my choices will continue to do that. It’ll probably just change the way it gives me that information, or something.”
“Well, let me know what choices you get, even if you don’t need help deciding. I’m pretty curious about what this could be.”
I nodded and closed my eyes to meditate. It took a bit longer than usual because of how curious I was, but eventually I was able to clear my mind and open up the choice.
Choose one Intelligence benefit to obtain:
Investigate
Once per Choice, you may pick one of the three shown options to Investigate. Upon Investigating an option, you will be shown the next Choice you will receive if you choose that option, describing the names of your next options and their full effects.
The depth of the Investigation will increase as you increase your Intelligence information rank.
Choosing this will replace all current Intelligence information benefits.
Impulse
You no longer have specific information, but will gain an instinctual pull toward certain Choices that the System predicts you would choose if you had all information about the System.
The pull will become more specific and identifiable the higher your Intelligence information rank is.
Choosing this will replace all current Intelligence information benefits.
Index
You will gain a personal artificial assistant that will help you make Spell Choices, Talent Choices, Upgrade Choices, and all other choices. The personal assistant will be fitted to your personality and history, and will be omniscient to the workings of the System as well as your personal self.
It will want nothing more but to see you succeed, but its capacity to help will be limited by your Intelligence information rank.
Choosing this will replace all current Intelligence information benefits.
This new choice was… interesting. For the most part, I didn’t get to see any exact effects, it seemed, but rather a general overview of what the choice would offer me. It was jarring, going from the exact numerical specificity of Spell and Talent Choices to this less definitive shot in the dark, but I still had a good bit to go off of here.
Investigate was specific, at least, but I also wasn’t as big a fan of it. Being forced to only see a single option’s future wouldn’t offer much information – what helped in making decisions was being able to compare my options against each other, and Investigate wouldn’t allow me to compare anything. If I decided I wanted to pick a certain option and then Investigated it, only to find that I didn’t like its future options, could I really go and pick another? What if the others’ future Choices were just as bad? I wouldn’t be able to know.
As for Impulse and Index, they were much less generous with what they told me about themselves. They both had something in common, though, in that they both seemed to be using that ‘logged’ information that the Talent had been gathering about me. Impulse straight-up said that it’d predict what I’d choose if I had all the information and then give me some sort of gut feeling that it was what I wanted. And Index would give me an assistant that was ‘fitted to my personality’ to help me.
They both did seem pretty similar in that they could potentially give me an infinite amount of information, but that vehicle through which the information was given to me was limited. And the way that limit worked was what made them distinct from one another.
Impulse could help guide me to the correct choice, but how would I know when it was guiding me? The description itself said that the ‘pull’ would become more specific and identifiable as I increased my rank, but that implied that it’d start out as unspecific and unidentifiable. Would it be the case that I’d barely ever feel it? Or that it’d be so vague that I could easily confuse some other natural feeling for Impulse trying to tell me something? The way it was worded, it seemed possible that I could feel ‘false positives’ for that pulling sensation.
Besides, I wasn’t sure that I liked making decisions totally blind, only relying on gut instinct. Sure, the System predicted I’d choose what it guided me to if I had all the information, but technically, it’d only begun logging my mind since yesterday. Who knew how correct it’d be? It could be useful as it got more powerful, but I didn’t like blindly relying on a vague instinct that’d be shoved into my head.
And then there was Index. That one seemed pretty strange. What would it mean to ‘gain a personal artificial assistant’? Whatever that thing was, it would apparently have all knowledge about the System, which would be incredibly helpful. Of course, that was met by the caveat that its ‘capacity to help’ wouldn’t be infinite. I wasn’t completely sure how that would work, but I assumed it’d be something along the lines of me only being able to ask it a few questions per Choice, or something.
Either way, I liked the sound of this one more than the others. Since it just let me ask questions and get answers to them, I wouldn’t have to rely on blind trust in what the System thought was best for me, like I’d have to do with Instinct. And unlike Investigate, it’d presumably allow me to ask about multiple options, so I could ask about the future of the specific Spells or Talents I was interested in and compare them to each other. I could also ask about specific ways the different options may work, or how they’d Rank up. And, unlike Impulse, I could have the information and make the decision myself.
It seemed my decision here was obvious. But Erani did ask me to at least read them out to her, so I went ahead and began doing that while I could still have the Choice pulled up, that way I could get the exact wording right.
“Hey,” I said, keeping my eyes closed. “Did you want to hear about those options?”
“Sure,” I heard Erani say.
“Alright, so–” I was cut off by a noise coming from off in the distance. A voice.
“No, dude, you shouldn’t use the Mana potion for a healing Spell to cure your headache,” the voice was saying. My eyes shot open and I looked around as we all got to our feet as silently as we could. The voices were coming from around a corner, out on the road – we’d strayed from the path so we could stay hidden. “Boss gave us those for a reason, there’s no way they’d approve–”
“Hey, wait,” another voice cut the first off. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Sounded like someone was talking.”
“Well, yeah, ‘course someone was talking. It was me, dumbass.”
“No, I’m not talking about– ugh. Just get the Infernals to go check it out. I don’t wanna get jumped by that fugitive guy. Prefer to keep my soul inside my body, thank you.”
“Hah, you really think he made it out here? I got a silver’s bet that he doesn’t even make it past the wasteland. Ghouls’ll get him.”
“Nah, dude. Have you seen those replications they made of him? Those fights he had with the Demons, the smoke coming from his hands, that shit was soul juice or something, man. He’s using the souls he captured to power his Spells or something, I bet. And the Nymph thing he’s got with him? The pet? Thing’s ruthless. No way they’d get taken down by the Ghouls.”
“Then the Trolls’ll get them. And if they don’t, those Hellion things the Demons have stalking the ground near the fort definitely will. Listen, dude, those replications of his fights, they’re made with illusions. It’s just what they think happened, based on reports. You know that shit’s always half made-up. He just got lucky a couple times. Probably hasn’t even gotten to Level 10 yet.”
“I’m just sayin’, I don’t wanna get my soul gobbled up by some freak.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll send the Infernals to go check out the noise.”
There was the sound of shuffling and stomping heading toward us, going off the path and into the gravel and bush – where we were. But we were already off, doing our best to sneak away through the thick shrubbery and around the group of soldiers.
“Kill them?” The Dryad asked me, baring her whip.
“No, no, too dangerous. If we kill them, we could give out our location. We need to escape.”
“Don’t like letting bad guys get away.”
“I know. But from the looks of it, there’s most likely a whole lot of them just a bit ahead. Once we find where, exactly, they are, you’ll be able to fight them. But for now, we just need to make sure we have the element of surprise.” I kept moving, eager to get away from our enemies, and the Dryad hesitantly followed. “Thank you for asking, though. I promise I’ll help you get your revenge.”
Luckily, the Infernals were obviously not in a hurry here, as I could hear them meandering along, lazily checking behind bushes and rocks as we hurried off, back in the direction of the fort – the greenery thinned out in the direction back to the wasteland, so we couldn’t stay hidden if we moved that way.
Once the sound of the searching Demons faded behind us, we slowed down.
“Okay,” I said, “looks like we weren’t safe back there. How far out do you think those patrols go?”
“No clue,” Erani responded. “Seems like it’s pretty far, though.”
I nodded. If we wanted to fully escape their sphere of influence, we’d probably have to flee all the way back out into the wasteland.
“Shit, Drake,” Erani said suddenly, looking up at the cliffs behind me.
Sure enough, I looked up to see a Blue Drake sitting atop one of the rocky crags to my back, staring curiously down at us. I almost attacked instantly, but paused when it didn’t move to attack us, itself. “Seems like it isn’t interested in fighting right now.”
“Yeah, probably low on Health, or something. Let’s just get back to the road. Those things can get territorial, and I don’t wanna take our chances with its forgiveness.”
But just as we moved to leave the bushes and head back to the path, I felt a stabbing pain on my back. Like a red-hot needle swimming through my veins.
“Ah!” I fell to the ground just as I got a notification.
You have been latched by Lava Slug.
You gain the following effects:
You lose 10 Health every minute.
“Arlan!” Erani yelped when I fell. “Is it the Drake? An attack?”
“Fucking– agh!” I gasped through the pain. I could barely speak.
“What happening?” The Dryad messaged.
“Lava Slug. My back. Get it off, please!”
I watched as the Dryad glanced over my back, reached down, grabbed something, and pulled–
Lava Slug has been removed. You no longer have the effects of Lava Slug latch.
Instantly the pain was lifted, replaced by a dull throb, like my body remembered what’d just happened.
“Thank you,” I sighed as I spoke to the Dryad.
“It was a Lava Slug?” Erani asked, examining the creature in the Dryad’s hands.
“Yeah,” I got to my feet and looked at it, too. The thing was tiny, not even larger than my index finger, and colored a mix of red and gold, with orange flecks swirling through its semi-translucent skin. On its front-end were two tiny hooks with pricks of blood coating them. It must’ve stabbed through my shirt and sunk its teeth in me. “For something so small, that pest really knows how to fuck you up.”
“There’s a reason they’re called Lava Slugs,” Erani said.
Then, as if to remind us that it was still there, the Drake growled, taking a step forward and looming down its rocky home to stare at us.
“C’mon,” I said. “Let’s head out. I don’t think it wants us lingering.”
I relayed the same to the Dryad, and started forward.
As Erani and I left, I watched her turn and gently place the Lava Slug she’d been holding down on the leaf of a plant. It wriggled and began moving, slowly crawling down the branch of the bush.
“Don’t just put it back, kill it. It’s a pest.” I walked forward and pinched my fingers around the butt of the Slug.
You have struck Level 0 Lava Slug for 11 damage and drained 5.39 Stamina over the course of 0.6 seconds using Noxious Grasp.
3 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 1022.
You have slain Level 0 Lava Slug.
You have earned 2 XP. Your XP is 8.
The Dryad looked at me, seeming a bit confused. “Why kill?”
“Well, you don’t like the bad guys, right? I don’t like monsters that attack me. As far as I’m concerned, killing something like a Lava Slug just makes the world a slightly better place.”
She tilted her head to the side for a moment, then nodded. “Understand. You not very different from me.”
“Yeah, guess I’m not,” I said. “Now c’mon. We need to get away from this Drake before it attacks us.”
Once we’d finally gotten to a spot that didn’t have patrols of Infernals roaming around, didn’t have cliff faces for Drakes to guard, and also didn’t have Lava Slugs crawling onto our backs, we finally sat and rested. It was a clearing we’d found off the path enough to not risk people hearing us talk, but not so far off that we’d need to worry about monsters. At least, we wouldn’t need to worry too much.
“So,” I said, “I’m gonna try meditating again. Watch my back?”
“Yeah,” Erani nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
This time, it didn’t take too long to get back into a state where I could make changes. I opened up my choice for Trailblazer, and read out the options to Erani, successfully this time. I also went ahead and assigned my Stat Points while I was at it, further increasing Conjuration.
You have used 3 Stat Points to increase Conjuration.
Your Conjuration value is now 95.
And then, once I was done reading my options to Erani, I took a breath, and made my choice.
You have obtained the Intelligence benefit Index.
It was time to meet my ‘personal artificial assistant.'
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