(Morgan Pov)

'Stat Screen'

[Name: Morgan Faust Gildard

Class: Magical Spearman

Title: The Slick Sacaen

Alignment: True Neutral

Age: 14

LV: 1

EXP:  0  (10)

HP:    24  (18)

STR:  6  (5)

MAG:  7  (6)

DEX:  7  (4)

SPD:  7  (3)

LUCK: 1  (0)

DEF:  5  (4)

RES:  4  (4)

CON:  7  (2)]

(AN: The parenthesis are for you, Morgan doesn't see this. The last time I did this was Chap 5_

This looks about right. I am still going through puberty, which means my body is still not finished growing. No matter how much I exercise or training I did, my stats did not improve until my body underwent a significant change physically.   

Training can improve skills, but exercise is an anomaly of sorts. If I do something for long enough I get a skill. I have been exercising nearly every day for about 9 years or so. Yet for some reason, I have not gained an exercising skill or anything relating to it.

This leads me to believe that exercising has a hidden effect on the body, and it's something that isn't as obvious. I think it may have a connection to level-ups, but I have no real way to test this.

I mean, I can think of a couple of ways to test my theories, but none of them are ethical.

The only way I know how to gain experience is by killing other humans, I haven't gotten a single point from any animal I killed. Not sure what other things I can kill to get EXP, but I haven't found them yet.

I am still not at the point where I am comfortable with experimenting with human test subjects. And I am even less comfortable with using human lives as EXP fodder for my experiments.

I also believe that human beings are also the most annoying variable to work within an experiment. Too many factors to take into account, no two humans are the same nor do they experience the same thing in the same way.

So there are a lot of ways things can play out, and that's all under my assumption that you can influence what you gain from a level increase.

In most RPGs, EXP is just a game mechanic, but in a world like this EXP might actually have to deal with actual life experience you have gained in the course of trying to level up.

Or maybe I'm just an idiot who is trying to see a pattern when there isn't a pattern in the first place. Overthinking things is a bad habit of mine as of late. I blame the magic in me.

Ever since I learned magic, I have started to show an interest in trying to understand how the world works. Trying to make sense of it and trying to fuse it with my understanding of basic physics. For the most part, I came up with answers I am happy with, but it's still just speculation.

Anyways, the reason why I have been concerned with stats as of late is because of my mission and future. I was given the mission to make sure none of the 8 Divine Weapons get unsealed or used.

My master told me to use whatever means to make sure those weapons stay away from human hands.

They say history always repeats itself, it's never anything new, just the same things under a different skin. The history of my world was filled with constant conflict, greed, and fear. Brought about people who were ambitious enough to sacrifice everything for their goals.

What those people can achieve is scary, but those ambitious men push humanity forward. Conflict breeds creativity, just look at World War II. Germany pushed humanity to a level that there was no coming back from.

I am specifically referring to the concepts of deterrence and mutual assured destruction.

The rumor of the Nazi regime developing nuclear weapons prompted the US to begin research into developing its own nuclear weapons. The Nazis were truly fearsome foes. I mean they were able to not only challenge most of the civilized world, but they were dominating the war.

The fear of their strength prompted those who were afraid to come up with something to even the odds. The Nazis were defeated, but the war that man started still went on. To end the war a bomb was dropped, and then another was dropped.

Things would never be the same.

The unprecedented destruction that came from those two bombs, brought more fear into the world. No one could feel safe until they had nuclear weapons of their own, and the arms race began. Eventually, many of the big powers got their own nuclear weapons.

However, we got to the point where once another bomb is dropped, the world will cease to exist.

These 8 divine weapons can cause a calamity with their existence alone. One divine weapon will give one nation the ability to conquer the continent when in the hands of a competent warrior. There are only 2 ways this can go.

Option 1, other nations get paranoid and start to search for the location of their own divine weapon. Option 2, a nation will pool its resources to create its own divine weapon. Humanity has done it once before, it's just a matter of time before they do it again.

If these weapons clash with one another, we are fucked! The last time two powers of this magnitude clashed, an apocalypse nearly began. I don't want that to happen, I am the person most likely to die first in any sort of apocalypse.

The apocalypse was caused by the magic in the world. The seasons were no longer influenced by physics but instead forced to change in quick succession by magic. This was done to not only drain the magic available on this planet but in this universe as well.

Lowering the amount of magic available in the world made it harder for people to reach the pinnacle of power. That's why the people in eras after the Scouring weren't as powerful, and why magic research has slowed down significantly.

According to my master, the world has since fully recovered from that time. That isn't good for me, that means people now have the potential to reach the same level of power as my master.

Why did I think of all of this?

Well, after I came to terms with my old life being gone for good, I thought about the good things I had going for me in my life. Naturally, I also thought about the bad things going for me as well.

It was at that point that I realized I have 8 swords of Damocles looming over me. Not going to lie, it has been a stressful part of my life. I tried to come up with solutions to this problem, and things came back to square one.

My master is using his magic to maintain the seals that hide the locations of the weapons and the ones that keep people from entering the location themselves. The only problem is the magic required to maintain those seals, which restricts his movement to a small area in Bern.

If he can't move, then he needs someone who can deal with problems that may crop up in the future. That where plan B comes into play, which is me. There is only one issue right now. I do not have the strength to ensure nothing goes wrong.

I need the strength to be able to deal with the worst-case scenarios. To me, a worst-case scenario is when a location where a divine weapon resides is not only discovered, but it is taken. The level of danger changes depending on what type of person takes the weapon.

There are 2 scenarios that I do not want to face, but I still need to be prepared for. Scenario 1, the person that takes the divine weapon is as powerful as my master. Scenario 2 is similar to scenario 1, the only difference being the weapon being stolen suiting the thief's fighting style.

An example of scenario 1 is, a master archer obtaining the Forblaze tome. The archer is still a large threat, but the tome won't play a role in my fight with them. In scenario 2, the master archer gets his hand on the Gale Bow Mulagir and that's bad, for ME!

Scenario 2 is the one I don't want to deal with, it's too scary. Fighting someone on the same level as my master is bad enough. When you add a legendary weapon that they can at least use, their threat level increases. If they master the weapon, then the situation is FUBARed.

My master has been mulling over this problem for centuries, so he might already have some safety measures set up already. He's just waiting for me to reach the base criteria to enact his plans.

Hassar is my benchmark for the strength a warrior should have in this era. He is the strongest person I have seen so far. So my current goal is to reach his level. I haven't seen the full extent of his power, but what I saw was enough to convince me not to use my old standards.

I did not know how strong metals were in this world, I knew what kinds of metals existed from master. But I had no idea how strong they were, considering magic is present within every object in this world. I needed someone to give me an idea of what I can expect from this world.

In my old world, I heard silk was 5 times stronger than steel, my spiders produce in my opinion the strongest and highest quality silk. Not sure if it's stronger than the titanium or tungsten equivalents in this world, as I haven't come across them yet.

I need to find some and do some tests with them. I really want to make my spiders produce silk even stronger than that. I'm getting sidetracked. A casual comment from Hassar confirmed that the silk was indeed stronger than steel.

A couple of years back we were experimenting with using silk to make armor. It was a lot of trial and error, but we found a way to weave the silk to make it more slash and pierce-resistant.

Adding a couple of layers makes them more effective, but they can still be cut and pierced with enough force.

The person we used to stress test our products was Hassar, we had to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. When it came to the arrow test, we had enough layers to make it as thick as the average plate armor in this era.

Hassar shot his arrow and not only did he pierce through all the layers, but he was able to damage what it was supposed to be protecting. What made it worse was, he was using a regular bow, regular arrows, and all of us there watching knew he wasn't using his full power.

All of us who worked hard to make the silk as strong as possible were bummed out when we saw how easily Hassar pierced through the layers. When it came to testing how slash-resistant our work was, we were redeemed a little.

Hassar cut through it no problem using an iron sword he found lying around, but he told us that it was harder to cut through than regular steel. He also said that it surprised him that the silk was able to stop his arrow from completely piercing through the target it was protecting.

We learned a lot that day, the first was that our efforts weren't in vain. Our silk if woven properly offers the same level of protection the average plate armor does while being very light. We also learned that to our chief, steel and armor mean nothing to him.

He was able to casually deal with something stronger than steel using the most basic weapons. He told me later on that while there is a lot of power behind his strikes, it isn't what he excels at. In his own words, he is a speed and technique-based fighter.

In other words, both his speed and dexterity stat is higher than his strength stat. I am morbidly curious to see what that looks like. But there is another part of me that wants to retain my last bits of common sense from my old world.

This world is very scary, and I'm somewhat scared of what I have to confront in the future. I asked Hassar how he got strong and he gave me a simple answer. He just kept fighting stronger foes and better foes, that is how he tempered himself into the warrior he is today.

That is why I decided to go on my own quest for power in the future. I thought I should at least wait until I have completed most of my physical development into a fully grown adult. So I decided to leave on my quest for power when I hit the age of 15.

Just one more year of taking it easy and enjoying the simple things. I have been using the past 3 years to prepare for my quest, making sure my absence won't cause a problem. I decided to leave for 2 years before coming back to the tribe.

How much progress will I make in those 2 years?