Chapter 163 – Testing the ss system.


    John woke up, brushed his teeth, had sex with Sylph, ate breakfast and then finally did what he hadn’t done in a long time. He opened his Character Sheet.


    Not a whole lot had changed here. He had spent thest 5 points he had gotten before the patch on Wisdom. Equipment was interesting however, for the sole reason that he was wearing none of the items disyed there right now. He checked his inventory, where all of them rested along with the Fake Keys. After some more tapping on the menu he found the reason for that. Auto-equip was toggled on. ‘Upon entering an Illusion Barrier, items that you are wearing currently will be switched out for the ones in their Equipment Slots. Empty slots have no effect,’ he read, then added himself: ‘So, I won’t end up naked, that’s good.’


    All things considered, that was quite useful. He looked for another option and found one. It was calledmand-equip, it basically did the same as auto but instead of doing it when he entered a barrier this one did it when he tapped a button. He could only create a few presets, but he didn’t even have half of the current one filled out so that was fine. Another tap and it was now disabled entirely, the items previously in the slotsnding in his inventory as they were reced with what he was wearing right now. He put it back on auto, put the items into their previous slots, and left that window behind.


    Next he tapped on his ss, resulting in the new window to open. He followed that up with essing the list of sses he had avable.


    ‘That’s an… interesting list,’ John thought as he went over the different bonuses. Lover Boy sounded like a total vanity ss. If he ever levelled it, that would beonly after he had more of his basebat fleshed out or if he ever found himself with an abundance of ss Levels. He was a bit surprised to see Fateweaver on the list. Did that mean he could reach the same absurd time dtion as Magoi? He was already able to slow time a bit but he doubted that Create I.D. would reach the heights required to make four days into a month just by levelling it. He would look into itter. Both it and his own Gamer ss were likely more utility focused.


    That left him with three sses he had actually expected: Arcanist, Elementalist and Puppeteer. With his toolkit these three essentially had to pop-up. Him having seen thising did not mean it was an easy choice however. Which ss would he want to level first? A ss Level became avable every set of 10 regr levels he had, so he had to be careful on how to spend that limited resource.


    ‘Let’s break this down,’ John thought, ‘Arcanist will boost my all-around spell capabilities. I would be able to use my arcane skills more. Which are these…’


    ‘…if the cost reduction applies to the HP to MP ratio of Mana Protection that is really good.’ He clicked on the ss to test that bit of math out.


    “Oh, well, could have seen thating,” he admitted, in reference to the 0% cost reduction. A level 0 ss shouldn’t give any bonuses after all. ‘I’ll have to work that out another time then.’ He closed this ss and checked out the next one.


    Elementalist was likely to save him a lot of mana now that the elementals cost him a percentage of his regeneration. They were also his most versatile party members, having a discount on how much mana he needed to give them was also nice and on top of all that they would have increased Stats.


    Puppeteer was the ss he had decided to aim for months ago. The thought of that actually made him slightly nostalgic. Easier times, practically an eternity away, despite it only having been a few months. ‘I shouldn’t let nostalgia impact my judgement,’ he warned himself and looked over the bonuses instead.


    Honestly speaking, he didn’t use Possession a lot these days. The Skill was still good but not as good as what else he had in his arsenal. The best strategy with it was to take control of a body he made using Gnome and/or Possess an object capable of flying as his eye in the sky. He only needed two Possession Slots for that. Therefore, acquiring more would have been useless. The Cost Reduction was interesting though, Possession now cost 1 mana per second, meaning that running two Possessions was almost crippling, especially as his mana regeneration was already reduced by 12% when he had his whole team active.


    ‘So, 3,28 reduced by 12% minus 2 is…0,89 mana per second left, that is bad,’ John sighed, the nerf had hit him quite hard. Especially as Mana Ray, his go-to spell, now cost six times the amount it did previously. He would manage though.


    Thest point was another stat increase, this time for Aclysia and Mono instead of the elemental girls. Extra Stats were never bad, but the two of them, Aclysia especially, already were pretty buffed up in that regard thanks to the Material Bonuses.


    There was another aspect to all of this, perhaps even more important than the bonuses: The Perks he would get upon levelling a ss. ‘Let’s just level all three of them up to 1 and thene back to this decisionter,’ he decided and selected Puppeteer for a start.


    “Well, that ss Challenge is easy enough,” John mumbled to himself and used Possession on the table and a cushion on the bed. A timer appeared in his field of view, slowly counting down.


    John epted. This was a straight up gift so he would have been an idiot not to take it. A minuteter the Challenge and with it that Quest waspleted. He clicked on the level up button that had appeared next to the ss name and then a familiar kind of window opened.


    Spellcarrier. It had to be Spellcarrier. He had wanted something just like this so often that now that it was right in front of him, he could not possibly resist. Golem Creation was okay and Reinforcement probably was very nice but Spellcarrier was just great. If he got himself a new flying scout, the ability to use it as a bomber with Arcane Explosion had the potential to be hriously unfair. The bullshit he could pull off with Mana Ray as well was just hrious in his mind. It gave him a workable outlet for his excess Possession Slots as well. All of those were good things.


    Speaking of that, time to check what he got out of the level up on basic bonuses.


    “Meh,” John said, that bit didn’t even warrant an Observe on Mono. Yeah, sure, the scaling was low because if it was like 5% that would break in a matter of a few levels but he found this painfully dull. Well, the perks were probably the highlight of the whole system. He changed to Elementalist next to see what the sticking bonuses would be.


    ‘Only the Possession Slot? Well, Gaia warned me that it would be greatly reduced,’ John sighed and closed the window. He should be happy enough as it was.


    After walking up to Mono he softly shook her. “Just 5 more minutes!” Mono pleaded, her voice muffled through her poncho.


    “Can’t do, I need to test stuff, earn money, grind - hopefully - a few ss Levels out and we generally need to do something before Smander starts going insane out of boredom.”


    The artificial support’s head popped out of her poncho. “What would you need money for?” she asked.


    “Buying the material Aclysia makes her skin out of when she is outside of Instant Dungeons,” John exined, “wouldn’t want me to die because you bump into somebody and they realized you were made from pure metal, thus summoning Gaia’s wrath onto me, now would we?”


    “I think you just want to feel me up and grope me,” Mono said and inched away from him, “perv.”


    Well, that suspicion wasn’t entirely without merit. Even if he wouldn’t have done anything without her agreement, he was still a young man with fantasies.


    John changed the topic. “I also need my phone back, wouldn’t want to miss Jane’s call. Another thing I need money for: pretty flowers.”


    ‘AND A GIANT GUMMY BEAR!’ Sylph suddenly shouted in his mind. ‘You need money for a very big gummy bear! That should be top priority!’


    ‘Sylph,’ Gnome intervened, ‘I know you really want that gummy bear but you hav- ha- haaaa- HATSCHI!’ the cutesy sneeze rang out, followed by a mumbled, ‘E-excuse me.’ A moment of awkward silence, then Gnome cleared her throat and continued, ‘You have to understand that we have more urgent problems.’


    ‘Noooooooo!’ Sylphined, ‘That is a conspiracy! You are all against me and my happiness. You are mean, Gnomy, a mean Gnome, a Gnomean, A GMEAN, YOU ARE A GMEAN!’ There was cackling in the background. ‘Stopughing Sally! Silly Sally! Silly Silly! You are all mean! This is an outrage! The public will not stand for this. If they find out there will be revolts! I dere this a crisis of national level, get it trending with #GummyBearGate. Mighty Sylphie deserves her gummy bear! I deserve…’


    Undine, who had had enough of this, put the bbering tempest elemental into a water lock. There was a bubbling noise in John’s head, which he had grown strangely ustomed to, as Sylph keptining.


    ‘That girl never runs out of air,’ Smander said. The usual pause ensued. ‘What? That pun was on purpose,’ she rified as everybody waited for her realization. A wave of disapproval from Undine, who got increasingly tired of all the puns she had to endure, ended Smanders giggling.


    ‘U-uhm, so are we starting now?’ Gnome wanted to know.


    ‘Starting? No, we are just experimenting and grinding out a bit,’ John mused, ‘things will start once Jane gets here.’