Chapter 8 – Lancaster’s Partner (Day 2)
After the End: Serenity by Lillene
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Serenity had deliberately overeaten at breakfast. He wanted to test how it worked. Unfortunately, he’d found that “overeating” wasn’t quite the same when it was more than he’d have eaten before - but not enough to fill the “pocket” of reserve energy for healing. He still felt hungry after breakfast, but wasn’t willing to go get more. He’d just have to fill the pocket up over the next few meals, then try overeating.

Rissa was strangely absent at breakfast, but when he arrived at the Magic Evaluation arena, she was already there listening to the lecture. He’d clearly been a bit late to breakfast after his talk with Kerr, and he settled down to listen. He wanted to hear all about the different Affinities they were teaching. Perhaps it would help with one of his Concepts, or even help open a Path he needed.

After the class, the two of them headed over to the Trial area. Even from a distance, they could hear the yelling.

“We had a plan, dickhead! If you want to set yourself up by cozying up to some asshole who puts a man in a coma for knocking on his door instead of helping out actual civilians, you go right ahead! Get your head out of your ass! Now, are you going to do what you know you should, or do I have to make you?”

Serenity called out to the man attempting to browbeat Lancaster. “Hey, what’s this now?”

The man turned. Serenity was pretty sure he hadn’t noticed the two of them approaching. “You! You’re that man who almost killed Macho!” The man was carrying a gun instead of the melee weapons everyone else carried. Which meant that he was either an idiot or he didn’t listen to advice. The evidence was pointing to both so far.

Serenity could already tell this wasn’t going anywhere good. Perhaps he could bring it out in the open. “I’ll have to do better next time.”

“You - “

Well, apparently the man did have one thing going for him. He must have practiced drawing and firing from the hip. Serenity only realized the other man wasn’t just reassuring himself by having his hand on the gun when he felt a burning pain in his lower abdomen.

Probably a good thing I don’t have intestines anymore.

Before Serenity could reach him, Lancaster had already tackled the man. One of the Trial instructors was there right after that.

“So, what now?” Lancaster seemed to have realized that he was out of his jurisdiction.

The instructor looked at Serenity. “You’re the injured party. Your choice.”

Serenity put his hand over the injury. His body was actively healing, and moving the bullet out through the entrance hole. It hadn’t hurt much until the bullet started trying to come out, but it wasn’t quite in the same orientation as how it had entered.

“No Trial for him today. In fact - his first Trial should be on the 4th day when it’s required. That’s a reasonable cost. Also, take his gun and destroy it. He needs to learn to not see all his answers there. At the least, another weapon will help him stay alive in the long run.”

The bullet had finally come far enough out that he could grip it and remove it the rest of the way.

After Lancaster got off the other man, he handed over the bullet. “Here, you can keep this. Remember that not everything can be killed with a gun.”

He’d run out of energy from breakfast expelling the bullet, and the wound was still bleeding rather notably. He closed his eyes and looked at the healing organ. He’d seen another input, so maybe if he triggered it -

He felt the healing energy rush through him, followed by a wave of weakness. It had completely drained his stamina, and seemed to have eaten quite a bit of the fat stored in his abdomen, but at least it had healed the injury. Quickly, too. He was pretty sure he was going to like this organ. Especially if he could get some food.

“Do you require healing?” That must be the instructor.

Serenity shakily stood up. “No, I’m fine, it’s just stamina loss for the healing.” He rubbed the drying blood off the site of the injury to see what looked like an old scar on his now much tauter abdomen.

Both Lancaster and the man who’d been yelling at him were staring at the healed injury.

“Lancaster, let’s get to the trial.”

They headed up the rest of the hill to the trial area.

“So, I’m assuming you two were partners before this started?”

“Yeah … we didn’t get along that well, but I hadn’t realized he was in favor of Macho. Helping civilians out was his idea. It sounded like a good idea.”

“It is. It just can’t be all we do. I wasn’t joking about those of us who want to be combat focused needing to get good.”

“If you need to get good - what hope is there for the rest of us?”

Serenity snorted. “I’m more or less a Tier 1 combatant. Yeah, that looks good against a Tier 0, but if you push, you can hit Tier 1 in a few weeks. Most people won’t hit tier 1 during this stage of the tutorial, but - that’s the difference between one every four days and one or two a day, especially if you solo any. It’s easy at first. By the end of Tier 0, everyone looks supernatural. Don’t worry about it.”

Serenity was essentially lying. Any Tier 1 that could come close to him would have had to repeat the Tier a number of times. That wasn’t the point, though. The point was that Lancaster couldn’t give up.

“Okay, you’ll probably need a proper healer. I’m a bit weird that way. But a proper healer wouldn’t have any trouble with that injury. Rissa’s looking at going into healing.” Serenity hoped that would help.

Serenity has a lot to learn ...

On that note, this seems like a good time to drop in some information about Tiers and Paths. Levels aren't worth much; it's 100 levels to a Path, and usually several Paths to the Tier. So if it seems like he's leveling a lot early on ... it's because early levels are really, really easy - and also low value.

Serenity is different from normal Pathed people; he doesn't know all of it yet, but he's already realizing that he's at a large initial advantage. I'll try to cover some of the basics below.

If you're not really interested, feel free to skip - I'll try to cover the important parts as they come up.

Paths

Paths come in Tiers. Tier 0 is known as the "child's Tier", because the ONLY Paths available are the racial ones. Children born within the Order (what you might think of as the System) automatically have this Path selected based on their Race. Most people can only take one Tier 0, because most people aren't eligible for more than one (even people who can usually don't because they don't consider it worth taking).

The Human racial Path is well known for being essentially useless past childhood. It focuses on learning the basics, and Pathed children are in many ways similar to child prodigies - but like some child prodigies, the bonuses become less and less important as they age. Its main long-term effect is to help set the child up with the ability to choose a variety of Paths later.

People who enter the Order later (like all of the students in this Tutorial) are given a special bonus - they can take a Tier 1 Path at Tier 0. They MUST still take a Tier 1 Path at Tier 1. Unlike children, students in a Tutorial are not allowed to take a Path until they are level 10, to give them time to earn something more useful than the racial Path. Additionally, they don't have to choose the Path until the Tutorial ends (or they hit level 100). If either of those happens, the Voice will require you to choose a Path.

You may repeat a Path Tier as often as you want - as long as you have a Path to take.

Your effective Tier is the one you are working on - so all of the students are currently Tier 0, and will be until they take their first true "Tier 1" Path. The instructors are Tier 2 or 3 (a few exceptional ones may be Tier 4). The Voice wants instructors that are more capable and knowledgeable than the students ... but ones that won't accidentally kill the students if they relax at the wrong time.

The 'standard' array of skills from a Path (note: this doesn't apply to racial Paths at all and there are quite a few special Paths that also ignore it - though the level for skills is pretty consistent):

Level 10: Utility

Level 25: Attributes

Level 50: Combat

Level 75: Path-related ability (often the 'most used' ability for the Path, especially non-combat Paths)

Level 100: Path capstone ability (in combat classes, often a 'finisher' or the like; always tied strongly to the class's theme)

Attributes

(Yes, I'll also call them stats. I probably ought to use the word Attributes more than I do, since it's more distinct from status, but ... eh.)

The first time you level through a Tier, you get attribute points simply by leveling. If you redo a Tier, you don't get more points from levels.

This is not the primary source of Attribute points - this is just the ones you get to pick. The primary source of Attribute points is your Paths - usually (but not always) the Level 25 ability.

Attributes are hard-capped at 100*(Tier+1). Essentially, 100 per Tier - including Tier 0. If you get permanent attribute points that take you over this, they are lost. Temporary bonuses such as those from limited-time skills or items are not subject to this cap.

A 'good' level 25 attribute bonus for the first Path in a Tier will usually fall around 150 points - yes, more than you get for leveling a Tier, you just don't get to place them. Repeating a Tier tends to give smaller attribute bonuses - closer to 100 before any issues with losing attributes due to the hard cap. A more focused Path may have fewer points given, but they will all work together, while the 150-point 'standard' will generally have something in all Basic Stats (everything except Luck).

Speaking of that - if you've never had a Path place points in an attribute, you can't put your free points there either. This is one of the things about the Last Reaper's choice of Paths - he never unlocked Luck. It was a 1 for his entire life.

The commonly accepted 'standard' for a combat specialist is 2 or 3 Paths per Tier, because this lets you get your physical or mental stats near the cap while also working on Perception or broadening your base a bit - without wasting too much time. It's hard to justify more than that for a specialist because so much is likely to be lost to the attribute cap - and while leveling a higher Tier is harder, it's not that much harder.

Paths adjust to fit the person, so most of the time if you won't get anything at all out of a skill it won't be offered - something else will be. So if you've truly capped your stats you may get an extra skill instead. In general, that's not worthwhile.

On the topic of Luck - it's actually two stats. Luck itself is unlocked by specialty classes - generally classes that use it. This is rarely ever a 'combat' class. It's often hard to see the effect of Luck.

Luck% is your lucky (und unlucky) effect on other people. The most common people to unlock this are leader types but any Path that specifically deals with people (in a way other than direct combat) could have the potential to unlock it. Hex and curse specialists with luck% are particularly reviled, because in order to effectively counter them, you have to have a high Luck stat of your own, which is fairly rare in combat specialists.

I think the rest of the attributes are pretty straightforward. The one thing I will say is that this is the standard array for Humans; other groups, even some Human groups, use different attribute groupings.

Serenity and Attributes

Serenity can get attribute points to all of his stats before he even chooses a Path. That's a fairly big advantage right now, but a temporary one. It's one that he'll have again at each Tier. If he really pushes his attributes, there's a chance for him to get additional skills - but because a Path is taken in order to join a Tier, that can't happen on the first Path each Tier.

He's still limited to the same cap as everyone else (he's counted as Tier 0 right now).

Sounds pretty broken, right?

Well ... maybe a little less if I tell you that the primary source of Ev isn't food but XP (in fact, while he doesn't know it yet, the ordinary food option will completely disappear once he has a Path, though valuables may still grant Ev). Fortunately for him, the XP to Ev ratio depends on Tier. Unfortunately for him, gaining a point in an attribute costs Ev equal to what the attribute is going to (each single point must be paid for). Increasing attributes right now is cheap, but it's not going to stay that way. There will be times where an additional Path is a far better source of attributes than spending his Ev for the XP used - but he won't always have that option. Most of his Paths won't grant attributes at all, because he has another way to get them.

The long-term effect, really, is that Serenity doesn't have to specialize in either physical combat or magic combat to have the stats of a specialist. Which .... okay, yeah, is pretty broken.

But he does have to pay a lot of XP to get there, possibly as much or more than someone who did the same thing as a Pathed hybrid build. So there's at least some balance to it. If he weren't already planning a completely unneccesarily complex advancement Path for himself ...  wait, I probably shouldn't complain about his silly plans here.

Now, his ability to near-instantly heal up to a certain amount in combat without taking any action? And in an emergency to burn his own body to heal (have we done that yet? well, if we haven't it's not too much of a spoiler: he can, it's broken, and it only works up to a point but that point's pretty extreme)?

That one's totally broken.

Well ... it is at this Tier anyway. There are some later-Tier abilities that are pretty similar.

And of course, the fact that he has it means he's going to "get" to use it.

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