“Penny! I have a problem!”

Behind the desk Penny jerks awake, “I wasn’t sleeping. Totally working.” but then realizes it's only Jason, “Oh, hey, what’s wrong? I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

“There is a problem and I think it is related to my recent advancement. Here look at this” and Jason with a few commands shows her his stats panel.

Penny takes a look at it before nodding, “Hmm, you dropped a few levels though that is normal. Why haven’t you spent any of your stat points?”

Jason just points at his displayed sheet again, “I would very much like to if I could.”

She finally notices that he doesn’t have any unspent, “Please tell me you just lost some stat points. Don’t make this be something mysterious. I don’t want to talk to him.”

“I went back to level 1 and hadn’t spent any points at all.”

Penny sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. Looking up at him she says in a weary voice, “We have to see Andrew”. She puts her face in her hands and sighs before continuing, “He’s the head of the local Magus circle. I really don’t want to talk to him. To be honest, he isn’t a bad person. However, I think my master described him best when she visited. He’s and I quote, ‘like a fruitcake where the bread was replaced with nuts’. Sadly he has studied the system and cores more than almost anyone else. At least that we can ask. While eccentric he actually likes people bothering him. Of course that is only if you can find his tower. Anyway follow me.”

Without giving him a chance to respond she rushes out of the guild and Jason can only follow in her wake. Soon they reach a run down hut on the edge of the village. Not seeing anything interesting Jason turns toward Penny but she is just standing there looking at something.

Jason looks around but can’t seem to find anything. Nothing to the side of the house or anything. Looking away from it he checks the area around. It seems completely normal. However Penny is still staring. Looking back at the house then away from it there isn’t anything around. Deciding there isn’t anything left to do he just stands there looking at Penny.

A few minutes pass when suddenly a barely visible wave passes through them. With a nod Penny starts walking towards where the house was. However when Jason looks back, it isn’t there anymore. Instead in its place there is a strange tower. It doesn’t look more than a handful of levels but at the same time the top seems to be in the clouds. Halfway up it tilts towards the side to the point it defies common sense. Despite that Penny is just nonchalantly striding through the front door.

Once inside the place is actually quite rustic. A small greeting room with a few nice upholstered seats. The floor is a nice varnished wood and the walls are brick. This would be more comforting if any of this matched what the room looked like before entering it. Even the door they just entered through is a different shape and material.

Penny final speaks up, “Welcome to Andrew’s tower. Don’t mind the transition, everyone suspects the tower outside is just an illusion and the door a portal of some sort. Too much magic for anyone to detect what is really up here, but that's what you get when dealing with these mysterious magic types. Anyway, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Tada.”

And just as she finishes her countdown an old man walks through the wall next to her and the sound of trumpets play while clearly illusionary confetti falls from the ceiling. The man starts to introduce himself, “Why hello there young one! I am the Amazing Andrew! To have seen through the compulsion you. must. be”, stopping his introduction as he notices that Jason isn’t looking at him. Take a peak to the side Andrew spots Penny and sighs, “Do you have to ruin my introduction every time you visit?”

Penny snorts at this, “Ha, as if you old coot. If I didn’t interrupt, you would have loaded him down with some fetch quest for your groceries or something. All your speak of how ‘incredible’ someone is for getting through that trash don’t see me enchantment out front tricks enough visitors as it is.” turning towards Jason she informs him, “That's half the reason he doesn’t mind visitors. With his darn research he has figured out how to word things just right that the system creates exciting sounding quests for the dullest of tasks. Just a quick sob story of ‘Oh no, my personal robe was tarnished and now beyond my grasp. Please oh brave one who could see through my magical guard, retrieve it! I will reward you with money equal to its market value!’ will send a fool off to pick up his robe from the cleaner for a couple coppers. The only reason you couldn’t see through it is you aren’t level 5 yet.” Turning back to Andrew she continues, “Anyway we aren’t here to mess around. He has a problem with his status. After forming his core he doesn’t seem to get any free stats on level up.”

This catches Andrews attention right away. Snapping his fingers and what was once an impressive looking outfit fades away and in its place only some ratty robes remain. The room itself even changes as everything now looks a lot rougher and much dustier. “Are you sure about that? The bonus stats may vary but people generally get at least 1 a level.” with Penny’s nod he turns to Jason and demands a look at his stats. Having been prepared for this Jason quickly shares his stat panel. Nodding at it Andrew goes over the screen then starts to tap it. Unexpectedly the screen actually responds to him and changes. Soon it shows various things like the highest level he got to and how much experience he has gained in total.

Raising an eyebrow Andrew turns to Jason, “Are you sure you’re a Traveller? Your core seems to be formed in a way that greatly reduces the energy you absorb from outside sources. Every other Traveller that has let me examine his panel after core formation have optimized it for catching as much power as possible. Quick, show me your cultivation technique.”

Jason goes to do so but Penny quickly stops him. While giving Andrew the stink eye she goes on to say, “Now Jason, as a lesson I honestly should have already taught you. NEVER just show your cultivation technique to others. It is the one thing you can’t easily change or fix. Someone knows the weakness of your strongest attack? Just train in another attack or modify it to fix it. Your cultivation is fixed barring very rare events. Now you can show Andrew as he won’t tell anyone and if you’re ever his enemy, it doesn’t matter if he knows it or not but the point still stands. Anyway, show him your technique so we can get to the bottom of this.”

“Okay, let’s get over the sheer hypocrisy of what you just said, I will show it to you both and don’t you say anything. You’re here so you get to be a part of this nonsense.” and with that he brings up the screen for his cultivation technique

Nodding his head Andrew waves his hand and with the formation of a small portal, a small table with a trio of chairs pop up. He gestures for them to all take a seat.

Time passes as they dissect his technique. First Penny is pointing out that her method has a similar bit to the Material body though it applies to just her shell. Andrew asks back if it is as non-specific and apparently it started as ‘Copper Shell’ and eventually upgraded to ‘Orichalcum Shell’. They all agree that with that in mind Jason should probably delay any specialization until it gives a good material. While Orichalcum is a good metal, it would be nice to upgrade it to Adamantine or similar and Penny’s ability seems to be specific to copper based metals.

Eventually they get around to discussing ‘Filtering Cycle’ and ‘Purity of energy’ which seems to be a pair. Back and forth the trio argues about the meaning behind it. It takes a while but eventually they decide this is the cause. Andrew is actually quite happy with this as it might prove one of his theory. After having studied the various methods of forming a core, he believes that the energy used to raise stats is taken from the so called impurities that people absorb along with the good stuff. He had noticed that the more energy absorbed the more stat points a person gets. This proves it to him though. It doesn’t explain what Jason needs to do though.

“Okay, I can get away somewhat with this because of the Body/Mind thing but that will only go so far. I am capable of killing above my level now but eventually without increased stats my damage will fall off and become meaningless.”

Penny nods, “You can do self training for some stat points and of course equipment will help but that also only goes so far. What weapon do you specialize in?”

“It took a while to find the option, but I specialized for unarmed combat”

That stops the conversation.

Andrew quirks his eyebrow, “Do you mean you specialized in gloves or maybe handwraps?”

Jason had been expecting this reaction. For a while he had suspected that the locals went through the same method for specialization or at least their choices affected the weapon placement. With that in mind the fact he had to go so far for the actual unarmed option said a lot more than it might otherwise have. “No I mean actual unarmed combat. Fighting with my body alone though I guess I could use gloves, boots, or similar such things though until I get to level 10 I won’t for personal reasons.”

Penny speaks up and points out, “That might actually be the solution to your problem. One of the basic upgrades a weapon gets from the system for specialization is better stat bonuses. I can’t speak for what higher grade quests might give you but for simple ones. Those might give you free stat points to spend.”

Andrew interrupts at this point by saying, “I might have a way to test the theory right away. As Penny pointed out you only need to be level 5 to find my tower. Sometimes though people like you, those who haven’t reached that level yet. These people will either be guided to the tower or have something special that lets them see my place. For them I have a special quest the system actually forced on me because of my rampant abuse of it. The reward is actually a basic weapon so we can try this out. Anyway, Ahem, ‘Oh great hero, I am in need of a special herb found only within the beast region of the forest. It blooms during karmically significant times and one of those are upon us! Within the next three days I need you to harvest it for me as you are linked to it.’ Anyway accept that. The quest is actually quite useless to me. All this quest does is spawn a blood bloom flower that is system linked to you so nothing else can bother it. I generally just toss the flower if no one needs it. While it says the thing only grows in the forest. The more correct way to say it is that the forest is the only place nearby that it grows. Farther south the thing is practically a weed as karmically significant times are a vague way to say ‘something important happens between two people’. That translate into basically any place people meet. Hell, the reason it is called a blood bloom flower is that any place an army meets down there will be covered in the things. Big enough battles in an area have actually been known to kill off all other plants because of them.”

As he goes on and on about the flower a quest screen has appeared before Jason.

Akhier

Things I wanted to mention but didn’t:

It took much too long for me to decide on the magic user guild being a Magus Circle. I didn’t want to call it a guild as in the game that has connotations (what with even the native being in on the system) and most other words didn’t feel quite right to me. Eventually I landed on calling it a circle as that is a semi common way to refer to a group of magic users. The Magus part is just because I like the word and it has never had a strong connection for me personally to a specific sort of magic.

What I mean by that is that if I called it a Witch’s Circle you would likely think of a bunch of old worty ladies around a cauldron trying to curse someone. Even the generic term Wizard has connotations of things like pointy hats and giant spellbooks.

Of course to some people Magus will have these connections. Luckily I don’t care. More specifically it doesn’t matter what people might connect it with as I am more using this as a mental thing to let nail down how I will describe them in the future. Basically the two words together end up meaning a local gathering of magic users to me. Even if those words have other meanings it won't matter as if I ended up digging into one in the future I will explain in detail who they are and what they are doing.