Chapter 75

Tom’s hand drummed on his leg. Should he be sacrificing more to this opportunity and getting a better outcome?

“Can I sacrifice more titles?”

Yes.

“Are there diminishing returns?”

Of course.

Tom only just stopped himself from rolling his eyes. A little more depth in the answer would have been welcome. “What do the trades off look like?”

The next Epic title will be a slightly positive exchange at the Very Good performance rating and slightly negative at lesser outcomes.

Subsequent titles will be a loss at anything less than an Exceptional performance rating.

He nodded at that information. “Thank you.” The answer meant there was more room to move, but he should think of future titles not as a net positive but as an opportunity to repurpose bad titles into something better. The problem was that he liked all of his titles and traits. He did not want to sacrifice an attribute every two levels in strength for a random earth or dark title. The continuous growth of strength would outperform titles like ‘Earth magic is ten percent more potent’ or ‘Shadows hide you better’.

If it was just a trade, then the existing titles were better. The only ones he didn’t’ see as core were the trial specific ones and he couldn’t use them because if he sacrificed Speedstar (IX) then his performance would drop by a full rank which was more than the benefit he received from gambling more.

“Anything I should know?”

Tiles and traits are fixed at trial entry.

“So if I gain any mid trial they won’t help.”

That is true, as well.

Have you made your choice?

Tom hesitated. “I’m not specialising further. Not in lightning, healing or summoning.”

Earth or Dark element then?

He shrugged. “One of them? Which one of them makes the best use of Speedstar?” He didn’t expect an answer, but it never hurt to ask.

I can structure a trial so both get the maximum benefit from your titles and traits. But it won’t work how you’re imagining. For earth, there are almost no restrictions on Spells to train. But that’s not the same for dark. To maximise your advantages, I’ll need to specialise dark in damage and defence. I won’t be able to include the utility aspects of the aspect.

“What?” Privately Tom was stunned by the detail that was being shared with him. The idea of a trial voluntarily shaping the set up to boost the challenger’s gains was extraordinary. Especially to the point of restricting the flavour of magic taught. He understood what she was saying regarding dark magic, but not the why? “Susie I don’t understand.”

Oh. It’s your speedstar title. Around half the utility aspects, of the dark element, can’t be trained in a way that benefits from that title. The tests for creating shadows, dark sight and crowd control like sticky shadows do not benefit from you being faster. Hence, if I’m maximising your performance based on titles, I can’t train aspects.

“And I don’t need dark sight, anyway.”

That is correct. That ability would not have been chosen for you, as dark sight provides only a small amount of benefit over your existing low light spell.

“With the optimal word being small?”

True.

“I was planning on dark.” Tom admitted. “In DEUSs’ trial my primary strength was evasion and dark utility would improve that.” There was a pause, and he got the sense that Susie was thinking.

Wouldn’t Lighting Feet and Dodge duplicate a lot of the strengths of those powers?

Tom nodded at that observation. She was right. The other important consideration was that his role here was different. He had a team. He was not a one man assassin behind enemy lines. He needed to work in concert with others.

Conversely, earth has no overlap with any of your existing abilities.

Tom laughed at himself. He was getting build advice from an AI and to be honest he was loving it even if he had hated the thought that his thinking had been so rusty. “You think I should take earth.”

I think it is a close call. If you were going for a pure power upgrade, you would have chosen a challenge request which would focus on summoning lightning elements.

Tom nodded at that observation. If he went down that pathway he suspected he would be on odds-on favourite to get rewarded a perfect run and probably unique title to aid in summoning lightning elementals but even an Outstanding outcome in earth would be better from him than that Perfect result in such a niche skill set. “I’m choosing earth.” He declared, coming to a decision. “What requests lets me use my titles the best?”

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A combat trial to develop earth elemental spells specialising in avoiding, mitigating and doing damage.

“Thanks for your help, Susie. Can I have that paying eight thousand experience and sacrificing the two titles?” Even as he asked, he dumped all of his fate with the intention of altering the trial that was being created to suit him.

It is customary for me to wish the challenger luck, but for you I am instead going to wish you mobility and may your feet always propel you to new places.

The world started changing, and Tom focused on Susie’s last words. If he took away the wish part and viewed it as advice, it was basically telling him to move as fast as he could, including into the unknown.

The personality was helpful he reminded himself.

Around him, the world changed, and he appeared in a rocky ravine. It was an impressive landscape and just like on earth, when he looked at the walls that had been carved away at some ancient point in the past he could see the different ages of rock. All the layers were various shades of dark brown with red tints, but there were sharp lines where the rock type shifted by ancient sedimentary layers. The GODs seemed to build their worlds based on archaeological principals or probably just borrowed this ravine from another universe.

“Pointless,” Tom hissed at himself. He focused on his immediate situation.

The magic of the trial had deposited him on top of a large boulder. It was small in the setting, roughly circular and three big paces across. At some point, violence had been unleashed upon it because he stood upon a flat surface created when the top of the boulder had been sheared off. The entire rock was encased in a familiar glowing blue shield, but when he quickly checked each of the sides, he confirmed that the rock under him he was some sort of natural monolith with a multiple body length drop on all sides.

Tom stopped pacing and forced his brain into gear. “What do you know, Tom?”

He was in a safe zone with limited visibility outside. It was like when he had been dropped into Existentia, but he stood on rock instead of dirt and for this contest he was by himself. The ravine was impressive in both its depths; it was a hundred plus metres up on either side and the steepness of the sides.

Climbing out would be complicated.

While it was dry, the rocks were scoured clean of plants, which probably meant there was a regular cycle of flooding. He peered anxiously at the sky and was relieved to see no clouds. Hopefully, escaping a torrential river would not be part of the trial.

Monsters?

He couldn’t see any, but with the fuzzy blue dome that didn’t mean too much.

Text flashed up in front of his eyes. Perfectly readable even through the uneven colours of the rock wall behind, it should have caused difficulties differently.

You have entered a Challenge Trial and have chosen the field Earth magic.

Progress through as many stages as possible to maximise your rewards.

All spells excluding earth and healing cannot be used in the challenge trial unless otherwise specified.

Spells not traits or skills, he was relieved to notice. Lightning feet was still available, his spear skills untouched, while his lightning spells were denied to him he still possessed fighting options beyond earth.

There was the distinctive sound of chimes, and the text shifted and changed.

Congratulation you have learnt the tier 0 spell Earth Manipulation.

The information to use the spell was inserted into his mind at the same time.

Old knowledge, to be sure, but it felt comfortable to have access once more.

Tom knew that this sort of trial was shaped for the average person out in the wider universe, for non-competitors. Most people who stood in his spot would not have a secondary history where they had already gained an in-depth understanding of the spells’ complexity. All that they would possess were their gut instincts and the information that the trial had given them. Absent titles, Tom recognised the advantage that his memories gave him. However, to maximise that advantage he had to understand what everyone else would have experienced.

He examined the details that had been put in his head.

The knowledge of how to use the spell had been gifted in a simplified form. It used images akin to a potter. By triggering the spell and pushing his mana through his fingers, he could then use them to shape rock or earth like it was putty. The amount of mana needed to do anything was significant, and Tom snorted at the minimal information granted.

Just from his mastery of spark he would have recognised that the spell could do far more than advertised but luckily he had specific experience. For mobility as opposed to battle in the DEUSs tutorial, he had picked up earth manipulation. Sometimes it was important to be able to widen a crevice or to climb a cliff. He knew exactly how much more flexible the ability was versus the barebones version that had been shared with him. He had only ever passively raised the ability during DEUS’s tutorial and because he had never intended to take the ability with him he had not tracked his progress obsessively like he had done with his core skills.

Nevertheless, he was pretty sure he had got his skill above seventy and he was here in this challenger trial where rewards were calibrated on the expectation that his experience with the spell was zero instead of measuring in the thousands of hours.

Basically, while he lacked the threshold bonuses, he used to possess he had experience abusing the skill that was closer to that of an earth master than a raw apprentice baseline he was being marked against.

Mana pool will be refreshed at each stage.

One minute to trial start.

Reach the second safe zone.

The blue wavey force shield around him did not disappear, but it went almost translucent, fading to the point you could barely see it, but as he got close, he could feel it.

High above him on the ravine wall was a glowing spot, which he knew was his destination. “How I am supposed to get there?” He mused while studying the alternative routes.

A dotted yellow line appeared showing what was best described as a goat trail that snaked up the wall with numerous switch backs till it reached the spot that was forty metres above him. The cliff was suspiciously smooth and despite his eyes being better than a normal human he could not see any handholds and that artificial polish went over the different rock types, leaving not a single crack that he could exploit.

There would not be any Tom knew. That wall would be perfectly flat and hard.

Forty metres straight up with two hundred and eighty mana it felt like he could do it.

“Will my crystal get recharged in each stage?”

Yes.

He studied the smooth wall that he was thinking about climbing. He would need to go down three metres and then cross what looked like another ten metres of smaller rocks until he reached the wall. There did not appear to be any monsters down there.

Ten metres felt like a distance that had been deliberately chosen. The world record on earth for a long jump had been around nine metres.

“Does any damage also get fixed?”

Yes.

Tom walked over to the far edge of the safe zone as far from the smooth wall as he could, and then waited. “Can I get a countdown from ten seconds?”

Yes.

Internally, he rehearsed what he was going to do.

10, 9… 2

Tom started moving, feeling his lightning feet engage. The extra power that the bright energy imparted.

1

He sprinted forward. The dome vanished when he was a step away from it. He planted his right foot right where the barrier had been and leapt.