Mage Tank

Chapter 24: Truth! Honesty!

“Can I see as well?” Xim asked. I also granted her access and sat for several minutes while they combed through the text, my knee bouncing with anxiety.

Name: Arlo, Esquire

Age: 0 (Physical age 18. Actual age 35)

Citizenship: The United States of America

Delver Level: 1

Level Breakdown: Copper: 0, Silver: 0, Gold: 0, Platinum: 1

Special Delves Completed: 0

Health: 362

Health Regeneration: 188/hour

Stamina Regeneration: 72/hour

Mana: 45

Mana Regeneration: 16/hour

Race: Human

Subrace: Extradimensional Entity

Birth Sign: The Traveler

Divine Patron: ????

Racial Bonuses:

Adaptable: +100% to crafting skill progression.

Subracial Bonuses:

From the Beyond: Your mind and body have been subjected to incredible dimensional forces and your soul has been irrevocably altered.

Acquired Dimensional Attunement

Dimensional Magic Intrinsic Skill granted at Level 10 (Bonus altered due to inability to acquire Intrinsic Skills when granted)

+100% to Dimensional Magic skill progression

+50% resistance to non-consensual dimensional effects

Granted Active Ability: Shortcut

Birth Sign Bonuses:

Spectacular Vernacular: You have an eidetic memory for languages and an intuitive grasp of grammar. You learn new languages and dialects at incredible speed.

That’s a Lot of Stats!: You can gain bonus attribute points through training up to a maximum score of ten in each attribute.

Divine Bonuses:

Divine Favor: For better or worse you have garnered the attention of a divine being. This divine being is currently your patron and has granted you a series of perks. Continue to garner their favor to be granted additional rewards. Anger your patron and suffer the consequences.

Divine Perks: Respawn, Customized Physical Appearance, Unique Birth Sign, Bonus Item Selection, Carryover Stats.

Carryover Stats: Your achievements from a past life have earned you bonus attribute points to certain stats.

+1 STR

+1 AGI

+1 SPD

+1 FOR

+4 INT

+3 WIS

+2 CHA

+1 LCK

Stats:

Strength 2

Agility 2

Speed 2

Fortitude 22

Intelligence 5

Wisdom 4

Charisma 3

Luck 2

You have 0 points to distribute.

Stat Evolutions:

Fortitude: (2/5)

Level 10: I Can Do This All Day: Health and Stamina regeneration bonuses from Fortitude are doubled.

Level 20: Body of Theseus: Extra critical damage you take and status effects you accrue from injuries to your organs is reduced by a % amount equal to your Fortitude. Current critical damage and status effect reduction: 22%.

Level 40: (Locked)

Level 70: (Locked)

Level 100: (Locked)

Attunements: 1/1

Dimensional

Active Skills: 2/10

Oblivion Orb: For the briefest moment you create a small dimensional tear in the shape of an orb in your palm, which transports whatever it touches to another plane of existence. Higher levels of Intelligence increase the size of the orb.

Mana Cost: 5

Cooldown: None

Requirements: Dimensional Attunement

Shortcut: Travel through the cracks between dimensions and teleport to a place you can see within (30) meters. Higher levels of Dimensional Magic skill increase range and may unlock new effects.

Mana Cost: 10

Cooldown: None

Requirements: Dimensional Magic 10

Passive Skills: 2/4

Who Needs a Cleric? (Aura): Level 1

You and your allies gain an additional amount of Health regeneration equal to your Fortitude up to a maximum of 25. Each level beyond the first provides +10% Aura Range and increases maximum base effect by 1.

Bonded Familiar: Level 1

You acquire a bonded familiar. Effects vary based on the familiar. Each level grants your familiar a +1% stat bonus.

Intrinsic Skills: 2/10

Dimensional Magic: Level 10

Each level grants +1% base effect to Dimensional skills and abilities (+10%).

Dimensional Magic Evolutions:

Level 10: Pocket Closet: Inventory becomes an accessible three-dimensional space which exists within a pocket dimension. Portal entrance can be summoned with one minute of concentration. Up to 50% of space inside can be designated as “quick access” space, and used to store and retrieve items through your normal inventory window.

Dungeoneering: Level 11

Each level grants +1% to all skill and knowledge checks concerning dungeons, Delves, and labyrinths (+11%).

Dungeoneering Evolutions:

Level 10: Must Construct Additional Pylons: 0.5% reduced mana cost for producing and operating Dungeon constructs per level of Dungeoneering (-5.5%).

Notable Achievements:

Dumping: After spending 5 or more stat points at once on a single attribute, you are granted 1 additional point in that attribute.

I Don’t Attack You, You Attack Me: So long as you did not attack first, an enemy becomes stunned for one second the first time they deal damage to you with a melee attack. An enemy who has triggered this ability will become vulnerable to it again at the next dawn.

Exposure Therapy–Poison: Toxicity build up is reduced by 25%.

Languages:

English

Hiward

Loward

Available Intrinsic Skills (Unselected):

Perfectly Balanced

“Huh,” Varrin finally grunted. He had his arms crossed as he stared into space, reading my screen.

“You’re actually thirty-five?” said Xim.

“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know if the years here are longer, shorter, or the same.”

“Why is that your first question?” said Varrin.

“I thought I was the oldest.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Let me go down the list of how ridiculous all of this is,” said Varrin. “I’ll ignore the fact that your health and regen are massive. That’s relatively normal considering the rest of this. First, you’re an extra-dimensional entity. What is that?”

“No idea,” I said. “Aside from the fact that I am an entity, and that I am from another dimension. Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.”

“Alright. Plus ten to the Dimensional Magic intrinsic skill right out of the gate is incredible, not to mention that you progress at double the normal rate and have a fifty percent resistance to it. Both extraordinary bonuses.”

“The human trait looks pretty bad in comparison,” said Xim.

“Don’t underestimate crafting,” said Varrin. “Your birth sign is just…” He held out a hand like he was waiting for someone to hand him something. “It’s overpowered. I don’t know what else to call it.”

“Stats through training!” said Xim. “Sure, languages are cool, but stats through training!”

“That’s not something you can normally do?” I said.

“No,” said Varrin. “You start at one in everything and get ten to distribute at level zero. Then you get a certain amount every Delve, which is dependent on the difficulty. What you have here is an ability that defies the normal logic of the Delves. We get stats from Delves. We don’t get them through training.”

“So, what? People here don’t work out or whatever?” I said. “They just all have the same stats until they become delvers?”

“No,” said Varrin. “Non-Delvers still benefit from exercise, be it physical or mental. When you become a Delver your body and mind become more idealized. Remember when we said that a Delver’s body is remade when they become a Delver?”

“Yeah.”

“A value of one in any given stat represents a high competency in that attribute based on your personal potential. So, for example, a one in strength is what you would have if you spent several years focusing on strength training, while trying not to sacrifice Agility or Speed. A one in your intelligence is your mind on your best day after many years of rigorous mental exercise. Becoming level zero makes you into the best version of yourself.”

“So my personal one in Strength,” said Xim, “isn’t as good as Varrin’s one in Strength.” She was over a foot shorter than he was, so that made sense.

“Sure,” I said. “So do only big dudes go for Strength builds? Hognay was pretty short, but crazy buff. Was his build sub-optimal?”

“It scales off as you level,” said Varrin. “If Xim and I both had Strength of, say, thirty or so, we’d probably be about equal. So there’s nothing stopping you from going that way as long as you don’t mind a disadvantage during early levels. But while we are stuck at a value of one without delving, you can continue to train and gain benefits.”

“A nine is basically the best any exceptional human can attain,” said Xim. “So a nine in Strength is about as strong as the strongest non-Delver who ever lived.”

“And a nine in Speed, the fastest,” said Varrin. “A nine isn’t your highest potential, it’s the highest potential possible for a mortal of your race.”

“And a ten is where people start being considered superhuman,” said Xim. “What this is saying is that you have the capability of training yourself to superhuman levels in every stat, without relying on the delves.”

“He’s still relying on the Delves,” said Varrin. “He got this ability from the Delve.”

“Not really. He got these traits from whatever this divine being is, the one mentioned on the sheet.”

“Hmm. Fair enough. Regardless, being able to obtain this many free stats is a huge boon to your early delving career. Then, take that in conjunction with the fact that you already started with free stat points from ‘prior achievements’. It’s an advantage most would kill for.”

“Most?” I said.

“If not all.”

“Would you?”

He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t answer.

“What about Intelligence?” I said, ignoring Varrin’s suspicious silence.

“What do you mean?” said Xim.

“If a ten is superhuman, does that mean I’d become smart enough to divine new fundamental truths concerning reality?”

“Intelligence is weird,” said Xim. “Plenty of high-INT Delvers come up with new ideas, but from what I’ve seen it has more to do with memory, inferences, intuition, and processing speed.”

“When I read the stat descriptions, the System implied that Speed dealt with how fast you think.”

“Sure, but Intelligence has to do with how fast you comprehend. They stack to some degree. A lot of the distinctions between stats bleed into one another. They all synergize in some ways.”

“If all of that weren’t enough, you have this ridiculous Dumping achievement,” Varrin said, guiding the conversation back to my abilities. “It gives you even more free stats. Dumping. I don’t understand the names of half of these things. Some look like jokes but Body of Theseus makes no sense at all. Who or what is Theseus? Why do you have their body?”

“He was a guy with a confusing boat,” I said.

“The boat was confusing?”

“Yeah. No one knew if it was the same boat now as it used to be. It doesn’t matter.”

“Gods,” said Xim. “I would almost say we should take you straight to Central to get half of this stuff documented. Who knows if any of it can be replicated, but it would be great to let others know that some of these abilities and achievements are even possible.”

“Yes,” said Varrin, “but then they would ask to see his character screen.”

“Yeah, and then they’d see it explicitly mention that he’s from another dimension.” She sounded distinctly downtrodden over that fact.

“And that he had a previous life,” said Varrin.

“And that a divine being is watching him.”

“And that I chose how I look,” I said. “Which would invite all sorts of criticisms that my fragile ego couldn’t handle.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” said Xim.

“You are a handsome man,” Varrin added, eyeing my boa.

“I will graciously accept your compliment, Varrin. Because it’s true,” I clutched the boa more tightly around my shoulders. “Obviously.”

Varrin shook his head and went back to studying the screen.

“Some of this looks normal, though,” he said. “This Exposure Therapy achievement. I got one similar, though the name isn’t the same.”

“Me too,” said Xim. “Mine gave me the option of getting Cleanse as an active ability and made it cost half mana when cleansing poison.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“Yeah. I was looking for Cleanse anyway, so it worked out.”

“If I’m doing my math right,” said Varrin, “then if you trained everything to ten without doing another Delve, you’d already be a D-class Delver.”

“D-class at level one!” said Xim. She looked at me, excited, but quickly realized I had no idea what she was talking about. “Sorry. For reference, a level one Delver is F-class, regardless of the difficulty Delve they did. That’s just how the stats work out. A copper that has done a full career of thirty copper Delves ends up with forty-eight total stats, which barely puts them in E-class.”

“Where do you get forty-eight from?” I said.

“You have eight to start, one in each of your primary stats. Then you get ten to distribute at character creation, so that gives you eighteen. Copper Delves give one stat point a piece, so doing thirty gets you thirty more stats. Add that together and you get forty-eight.”

“The classes are divided into tiers,” said Varrin, ”based on your total number of stats, but that’s something we can go over later. It gets complicated.”

“It’s not that complicated.”

“You’re just saying that because you’ve spent your whole life knowing about it. Imagine trying to explain to a five-year-old the nuance of the Delver tiers.”

“He’s not five.”

“You’re right. His character screen says that he’s zero. Insofar as this world and this culture, that’s the truth.”

“I still don’t think it’s that complicated.”

“How about this,” said Varrin. “Imagine that a Hiwardian peasant woke up in the Third Layer and you wanted to tell them everything about Adaramalech and the nine hierarchies of Ghotrithodon?”

“That’s a bit of an esoteric subject. First, I’d have to figure out how to keep them from dying.”

“Yes. Right now, Arlo is in a similar boat. The Delver tiers don’t matter. What matters is trying to get this figured out so that Arlo doesn’t get killed, kidnapped, or imprisoned.”

“Are those all likely possibilities?” I said.

I began to feel a warmness in my chest over Varrin’s concern. The two of them weren’t freaking out. They weren’t accusing me of being a lunatic or trying to trick them. They weren’t trying to abduct me or sell me to some shady laboratory. They were explaining shit to me. And it seemed like they genuinely wanted to help. It took a huge weight off that I didn’t realize I’d been holding, and I was truly grateful for it.

“Delvers are not a monolithic organization,” said Varrin. “In Hiward, access to the Delves is restricted to the noble classes, but we are bound by treaty to offer a certain number of slots to neighboring nations, whose access is governed by their own rules. Even within Hiward, where Delvers are some of the most visible members of society, many underground organizations still form to achieve their ends through illegal means.”

“He’s saying yes,” said Xim. “People will be very interested in your abilities and even more interested in reincarnation and dimensional travel. While there may not be any official organizations that will lock you in a dungeon and extract your bone marrow, there are some unofficial ones that will.”

“Like the Cabal of Shadows,” said Varrin.

“Or the Obsidian Court,” said Xim.

“Or the Cult of Singularity.”

“Maybe even the Three Scales.”

“I wouldn’t put it past the Beacon Watch, either.”

“Jesus,” I said. “That’s so many. Why are there so many? Why do you know about so many?”

“I’m a low-lord,” said Varrin. “My mother and father keep me apprised of the goings-on in the realms.”

“And I just think they’re neat,” said Xim.

I shuddered.

“There’s enough evidence here to convince most that what you’re saying is at least partially true,” said Varrin. “That information can prove dangerous, so you should be careful who you tell.”

“No trouble there,” I said. “I almost didn’t tell you two.”

“I understand your hesitation, but I also believe that would have made things very difficult for you.”

“So, what now?”

“You’re already in the Delver system. That is proof that you are who you say you are.”

“Like a state-issued ID?” I said.

“More or less.”

“It’s better than that,” said Xim. “Your Delver credentials are embedded in the System itself. The slate Myriam had you touch just shows her the info that’s in there. The System-provided information is absolute proof and can’t be faked.”

“There’s some info that gets added by the government, like entry permissions and Delve fee records,” said Varrin. “It’s easy to tell the difference, though. The System-generated info will always be prioritized.”

“So what all does that do for me?”

“It satisfies almost everything that would require proof of identity,” said Varrin. “For Delvers it is the best form of identification. You can use it to buy property, open bank accounts and lines of credit, or as an entry pass to events where you’re a listed guest, such as balls or private dinners, or any other circumstance where your identity might be questioned.”

“I don’t need to forge a passport and social security number,” I said. “Got it.”

“There is the minor issue of your country of origin, though.”

“Right. The USA. Obviously not a country here, so how does that work?”

“I’m not really sure. Since it’s in the System it won’t be disputed that it exists, but you may be met with some hard questions as to where it is or what it’s like.”

“Is the whole world mapped?” I asked. Varrin shrugged.

“Maybe. Up until a century ago it was common knowledge that the known world was limited to Arzia. However, as technology has improved since the discovery of the Delves, it’s now being theorized that there is more to the world than we thought. There is no country known as the USA in Arzia, but it is possible you could claim to be from beyond the continent’s borders.”

“That’s technically true,” I said.

“That’s my least favorite kind of true,” said Xim.

“You told Myria and Lito that you were portalled in?” said Varrin.

“Yeah.”

“Then you’ll want to keep that story. You’re not from Arzia. You were portalled in for the Creation Delve. And now…”

“He’s stuck here?” suggested Xim.

“That might work. No one here would know where to portal him back to. The issue with that story is how you got on the list without anyone in the Hiwardian government realizing you were from outside of Arzia. If that were the case someone of note would have been made aware, since it confirms the idea that there are nations beyond the ones we know. It probably wouldn’t be the type of thing that is spoken about publicly, so it’s possible that you may get lost in the bureaucracy. Maybe.”

“But if someone starts digging,” I said, “they’d realize no one actually approved my presence.”

“The approval is in the System, though,” said Varrin. “That alone should trump any independent investigation.”

“Is knowing all this part of your lordly training?”

“Yes. It also helps that my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents are well-known Delvers. My family helped write many of the laws that surround the governance of Delvers and incorporation of the System into the existing power structures.”

“Oh. Ok.”

“The best move would be to have you immigrate. That way you can claim Hiwardian citizenship and avoid questions about the USA.”

“You can just call it the U.S.”

“I thought the USA was already an abbreviated term. It’s what you used earlier.”

“It is, but that’s like, the formal abbreviation? No one really says that. It’s just ‘the US’, or ‘America’. But I always thought America was presumptuous. There’s North America, Central America, South America. It’s not like the US is all of those. It’s not even all of North America.”

“I see. I’ll just say the US then.”

“Thanks.”

“As I was saying, if you immigrate, you can claim Hiward as your home country and that settles most of your problems.”

“Then you’ll just be that weird guy who refers to things that no one understands,” said Xim.

“Like twinkies and hotdogs and AR-15’s?”

“Exactly like that,” said Xim.

“Maybe try not to,” said Varrin. “As tempting as I’m sure you’ll find it.”

“Well, that sounds like a plan.” I stood and stretched, then clapped my hands together.

“So, how do I immigrate?”

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