TT:E C14

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Hit Points: 100

Hit Points are a representation of your physical health. They are not some magical form of protection, a power from the System that overrides the natural order, or anything else in that vein. They represent how healthy you are and how close you are to death, but are not infallible. Anything that would kill you in a single blow will continue to do so until your body has been enhanced by enough Quezeuq Energy to withstand it. Leveling up and otherwise gathering Quezeuq Energy into your body to reinforce it will make you able to take more damage without serious injury or death, but destruction of your brain and other similar effects will still kill you instantly regardless of all other factors. Wounds that are not treated in one manner or another are still dangerous, just because you have some HP left does not mean you will not suddenly die. Similarly, wounds may worsen suddenly or other effects may occur that cause damage to become significantly worse in very short amounts of time. Medical attention is still necessary and sleeping will now magically heal all injuries.

At low levels your HP is your constitution score multiplied by 10.

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Maeve read through it absorbed the information, and quickly moved to the next one. Hit points weren’t real video game hit points, they were more… actually the System really summarized it the best way she could think of. They represented how much damaged you’d taken by summarizing your body as a number. It wasn’t exhaustive or, as it had said, infallible, but it would help to gauge damage, healing, and other effects in a world where numbers for stats were now a thing to pay attention to. The “at low levels” part was interesting, but Maeve guessed it was just the System hinting that shit got more complicated the more powerful you got.

The next info dump she wanted was on MP, just to be symmetrical.

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Mana Points: 120

Mana Points are much simpler than Hit Points. Quezeuq Energy and it’s subtypes are easy to quantify, unlike the conceptual idea of how close someone is to dying. Mana is Quezeuq Energy “flavored” into a specific subtype based around spellcasting. How many Mana Points you have at any given moment are a numerical representation of how much mana your body contains that is ready to be used in spellcasting.

At low levels your MP is you intelligence score multiplied by 10.

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A much quicker read, and same thing with the “at low levels” bit, solidifying Maeve’s theory. After reading those two she started telling Ed what she’d learned.

He frowned and looked unhappy after hearing about HP. “So it looks just like how HP looks in games, but isn’t really the same? A lot of people are going to ignore that explanation and die thinking they know how everything works.”

Amelia glanced up from her own screens. “That’s a little depressing.”

“It’s a lot depressing, but we can’t help anyone that acts like an idiot. We just have to make sure we don’t fall into that trap.” He shook his head. “Still sucks though.”

Maeve gave the man a searching look. “Ed, every time I’ve met you you’ve acted like just some dude who also does historical reenactment and HEMA stuff. Which isn’t very ‘normal’ but you know what I mean. How come you’re so much more… I don’t know if this is the right word but, philosophical? Methodical? You’re more thinky.”

“His last girlfriend told him he talks too much and acts like he’s so smart all the time when she dumped him and he got all self conscious.” Amelia said before Ed could respond, “Alex and I have been trying to tell him that’s she’s a moron and he shouldn’t care about her crap, but…”

“Amelia!”

“What? I’m right, you’ve been trying to be more ‘chill’ since she said that except you’re not being chill, you’ve just been a blander version of my friend when other people are around.”

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t say stuff like that in front of people!”

“Why? The world is ending, who cares if you got self conscious about what she said? Cause she was stupid to let you go. If I didn’t have my delicious milk-chocolate and vanilla swirl sundae you’d be a great pick.”

“You need to keep work shopping the pet names.” Maeve informed her friend seriously.

“Too long?”

“Sure, let’s go with that.”

“I…” Ed threw an arm up in disgust. “Sure, fine. Yes, I let her get in my head when she brought up stuff I was already worried about and it got worse in front of the cute girl okay?”

“It never would have happened,” Amelia said without looking up, “You’re in her strike zone physically, not that it’s a narrow one, but you don’t read enough.”

“Amelia!”

“I didn’t cut corners with him, I’m not going to go easy on you either.”

Maeve and Ed shared an awkward look.

“Not really a good time to try dating anyway,” Ed muttered.

Taking that as the out it was intended as, Maeve dived back into explanations on her statues. Besides the descriptions of each skill and spell, the only thing she was too confused about was the words next to each skill and spell.

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Mastery Progression: Neophyte 1 (0%)

Mastery Progression is how one’s individual skill with their skills, spells, abilities, and the many other ways the System organizes modifications made to people via controlled Quezeuq Energy are tracked. There are nine tiers of mastery:

Neophyte

Novice

Amateur

Initiate

Apprentice

Journeyman

Expert

Master

Grandmaster

Each tier is broken down into stages, numbered one through nine. Upon reaching 100% progress through each stage you will advance to the next, denoting your progress in mastering that skill or spell. Upon reaching what would be the tenth stage you instead advance in tier. Reaching a new stage in skills can unlock new spells or improve the skill overall, while reaching new stages in spells only improves the spells capabilities. Reaching a new tier in a skill will definitely unlock new spells and increase the skill overall, while spells will receive dramatic increases in ability.

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“Skills, spells, and everything else have a leveling system it calls ‘Mastery Progression’ broken into nine tiers with nine stages to each tier.” Maeve read out. “This System really likes the number nine for some reason,” She added in a mutter.

“Three threes, maybe?” Amelia ventured after a moment. “Rule of three and all that?”

“Could be. Got anything else to share?”

“Nah, same as you so far, you’re just reading faster than me.”

“Lots of practice. I’ve only got descriptions of my skills and spells left.”

“Let’s just share those with each other when we have time, no point reading every detail out loud to each other when we can just summarize those.”

Maeve rolled her eyes where Amelia couldn’t see. She actually appreciated having the details so she could make plans, but her best friend was more of a seat of her pants type of gamer. Now that their actual lives were on the line Maeve was much more invested in making good plans base off known variables, not guessing based on summaries. No point forcing Amelia to be someone else though, Maeve would just double check everything and keep notes for planning things later on.

Pursing her lips in thought, Maeve sent a mental command to her status and grinned when the menu she wanted popped up. “There’s a note pad built in, nice. We should explore and find out what else there is in this after we’re done with our status pages.”

Amelia shot her a knowing look. “Checked so you could make notes on all our skills and can double check the numbers for everything?”

“… Yes.”

“Thought so. I’ll remember to send you everything.”

“Please and thank you.”

Ed craned his head around to look at both of them without leaving the doorway. “Are you two married or something? I felt like there was a whole buttload of conversations that just happened all at once.”

“We’re best friends forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and-“

“Please stop.” He begged.

“That means we know each other inside and out.” Amelia finished as if she wasn’t going to keep going if he didn’t say anything.

“Me and Alex aren’t as close as you two.”

“That means you two have less ‘ever’s in your titles for each other then.”

Maeve tuned out the bantering and started pulling up skill descriptions.

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Body Magic - Neophyte 1 (0%)

Allows usage of magic of the ‘body’ type, focusing on augmentation of the physical forms of living beings above a certain level of complexity, generally referred to as ‘animals’ in your language.

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“Well that’s a basic as hell description.”

“Yeah, my skills are pretty short too.” Amelia complained, “‘Healing magic allows usage of magic of the ‘healing’ type, focusing on repairing the wounds, injuries, and damage of the physical forms of living beings above a certain level of complexity, generally called animals.’ Because that tells me so much more than I already knew.”

“Might be we’re starting to run into that information wall the System mentioned.” Ed shifted in place, his armor clanking slightly when it hit the wooden frame. “We’ve proven ourselves strong enough to get to level one, now we need to show we’re capable of dealing with limited knowledge or something like that.”

“I can see it,” Maeve agreed after a moment to think it over. She pulled up her other magic skill after a second more of no one adding anything.

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Shadow Magic - Neophyte 1 (0%)

Allows usage of magic of the ‘shadow’ type, which utilizes and controls shadows for a number of different effects including ones that are more literal with the concept of shadows, those based on more esoteric effects, or those that are more metaphysical in nature, interacting with your own personal or cultural interpretations of shadows.

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Maeve blinked in surprise for a while, just staring at the screen. “…I’m going to share this one with you,” She said to the other two who were awake, “It got weird immediately being so basic.” She mentally agreed with the “are you sure prompt.

“That’s not that weird,” Ed said after reading it, “It just uses more words, I guess because shadow magic is more complicated than body or healing magic? It’s still equally as basic about what’s actually possible with it.”

Maeve shook her head. “Sure, that could be it. This is all guesswork, I was just expecting it to be similarly short.”

“All we can do is guess and make assumptions until we can get definitive answers.” Ed replied with a shrug. “You guys know enough about games in general to keep us headed mostly in the right direction, so I’ll go with your calls.”

“No pressure, or anything.”

He chuckled wryly at her and went back to his quiet watch.

Before Maeve could dive back into her skill descriptions, Amelia chimed in. “I found something you haven’t, spell levels.”

“You mean the mastery thing I just described?”

“No, the tags in the front of your spells. All of mine say “lesser” and then the name of the spell.”

Maeve quickly checked her status, “Oh, mine too.”

“Right, so apparently it goes lesser, minor, standard, which is just the name of the spell with no tag, then major, and finally greater. One of the upgrades that comes from getting to higher mastery levels is upgrading the level of the spell to the higher power versions.” Amelia informed them.

“Does that apply to other… things? Like whatever people with power or stamina based classes get.”

“Um, it doesn’t say.”

“Guess we’ll ask when someone gets a non-mana class.”

After that, Maeve quickly bolted through her last three skills’ descriptions. She wanted to learn about her spells first, because magic! But being careful and methodical was best.

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Lingering Spells - Neophyte 1 (0%)

Spells you cast that have lasting effects will last slightly longer. Higher levels of mastery will allow spells to last increasing amounts of time more and potentially add other effects.

Currently spells you cast that work over time or remain for a period of time last 1% longer.

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Mana Control - Neophyte 1 (0%)

Mana Control is the ability to directly control one’s mana in their own body, whether that’s in the mana pool, during casting, or both. This skill is useful in gaining more manual control of spellcasting, allowing the tweaking of spells to magnify some effects while lowering others or just being able to dump more mana into a spell and increase it’s power. It is also a necessary skill to learn many skills for increasing mana regeneration. Higher levels of mastery will allow for finer tuned control over mana in your body and may provide additional effects. As a skill implanted directly into the user instead of being learned naturally in this instance, this skill also comes with the basic knowledge needed to use it.

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Magic Resistance - Neophyte 1 (0%)

While not as strong as some of the specialized resistances, Magic Resistance is a much desired skill by most of the Greater Universe. This skill directly hardens your body against harmful magic and magical effects, dulling their impact or damage done to you. Because it is a broad skill that will work against all magic, it is not particularly powerful against any one type of magic or magical effect. Higher tiers of mastery will provide greater defense against all forms of hostile magic and could unlock additional abilities.

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Maeve grinned to herself. All three skills did exactly what she’d hoped they did when she read them. Bonus points to herself but all of them were skills she had no idea how to get manually. Tactics she could work out by getting good at tactics, the same with Multitasking or any other skill she’d been offered, but figuring out how to control her mana or make spells longer when that hadn’t been something real before this? She was more than happy with her choices.

“And now, spells!” She whispered to herself happily.

“Ha!” Amelia teased her, “I’m already on my second one.”

“This isn’t a race.”

“Says the person who’s losing!”