chapter 66
It was a good thing that I no longer had to worry about hangovers, because if I did, I bet I’d have a massive one right now.
Of course, Thoron had to join in after he saw me getting drinks for Khasindra. Then Varkun joined, and things just escalated from there. Good thing I got the room details before things really got out of hand.
Looking around, the room itself was quite normal—like a regular hotel room. It had a shower and a decently sized soft bed. And a pretty good view of the city from the window.
Perhaps city was a bit too big of a descriptor for this place. This was more like an average-sized town, nestled between a small mountain and the sea.
The sun was starting to peek over the horizon, painting everything in a wonderful light. If I looked up at just the right angle, I could still see the shipyard, although from down here, it looked so small.
Looking toward the sun, I had to strain my artificial eyes to be able to see without the light blinding me. But it was impossible to see the forge that was around the sun from so far away.
It was time to start making some plans about my skills, but unfortunately, I didn’t have an available connection back to my ship and my AI. I wondered if it would be possible to get some skill that would help with that, because being able to stay connected over longer distances might become quite crucial in the future.
Opening up my status screen, it was easy to see the additional information here about my skill slots and how many of them I was using.
Name: Remi Graves
Age: 34
Species: Human variant (bio-cybernetic) Male
Bonds:
AI: Lola, Bob, Dean, Sam (400+)
Ship: Forward Horizon
Items: FH-02, Revolver
Enhancements: Bio-cybernetics, Bio-nano machines
Body: rank G
Mind: rank G
Core: rank G
Innate ability: Looting variant
Affinity:
Basic: rank G 1/3 4/22
Mind: rank G 1/3 2/7
Mechanist: rank G 1/3 1/12
Skills:
Apprentice Mana Sense
Apprentice Mind Guard
Apprentice Telekinesis
Novice Command
Apprentice 6th Sense
Novice Sense Aura
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Khasindra did mention that as I continued to grow stronger, I should be able to start feeling out my skill slots myself. It was just that when people got started, they weren’t strong or attuned enough to themselves to figure that out.
This seemed kind of backwards to me, because at the start is when you needed to know how many skills you could actually slot in. But life sometimes was backwards.
The seven mind slots were a disappointment. Twenty-two basic skill slots were a good surprise, but the mechanist's twelve—now that was something truly special.
Lola had gathered some information about skill slots, but it was a bit unreliable and, as it turns out, a bit wrong. I was expecting even fewer skill slots, but I’m glad that I have a pretty decent amount.
How much I was using my affinity’s capabilities of storing skills also came as a surprise. I expected the four special skills I have to use up an entire skill slot for every affinity. But I guess the term ‘skill slot’ itself is wrong—it's just used as an average of how much space a skill takes inside that specific affinity it's tied to.
Most likely, there will be skills complex enough that they might take up more space, but for some reason, I think I should be able to tell before I absorb them if they would.
Back to the problem of me not understanding exactly why I’ve used so few skill slots in my mind and mechanist affinity.
There was a pretty obvious distribution that I think is the correct way to look at it. It seems that the four skills only use one slot in the mind and mechanist affinity, but use three slots in the basic affinity.
So one skill uses 25% Mind, 25% Mechanist, but more than 50% Basic. Most likely because the skills themselves were too complex for the basic affinity to properly store, which should explain my current usage of my skill slots.
That’s so much better than I expected, and who would have known that my basic affinity would be even more useful than it is? Also, it seems like my mana sense is fully used by my basic ability, even though I’m pretty sure that my mind affinity also affects it.
Why do I have the feeling that skills and their applications are a lot more complex than I originally thought? And of course, my Mind Guard skill is fully located in my mind affinity.
The fascinating thing is that I could actually change the number of skill slots I have. Currently, my affinities are equally distributed. But as I continue to grow stronger, I should be able to grow an affinity to take up a larger portion of my core.
Khasindra said that doing so would also increase the number of skill slots I have in that affinity, but also decrease the skill slots I have for the affinities I’m shrinking.
So right now, each of my affinities takes 1/3 of my core. If I were to shrink my Mind affinity and increase my Basic. The amount of skill slots I have overall should increase by quite a lot, because the Basic affinity seems to be more efficient and allows you to have more skill slots.
Of course, the Basic affinity isn’t the best for stronger, more complex skills, as it is mostly meant to support quite simple skills.
That would also be a problem for the future, but I could see a case where someone would only need one or two skills from one of their affinities to help boost their primary affinity skills, where they would want as many skill slots as possible.
The question came back to: what type of build would I like to go for? That was a much harder question than I wanted it to be.
Lola started the research into the truly powerful and how they fought, and FH has continued that. The current results seem to show that ranged weapons aren’t that common in fights among the truly strong.
For me, right now, using ranged weapons—especially guns—gives me a large advantage in portals and general fights. But trying to build myself around ranged combat doesn’t seem to be a good long-term idea.
Then, of course, there’s my drone and AI side. There are people who truly go down that route, and while I do want to do that to some degree, I don’t want to be someone far away from battle, even if it would be a good choice for survival.
It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?
For me, fighting has always been a necessity. Something I have done because I had no other option. But now, I sort of have a choice in the matter, and every time I think about going the safer route—that of just being a cargo transporter—it just feels wrong.
Of course, there’s danger in cargo transport, nothing in this galaxy is truly safe to do. But it would be a lot safer than hunting pirates or looking for space portals, and even worse, trying to hunt down space monsters.
Yet… do I want to live like that, just trying to keep myself as safe as possible?
Every time I glance at my status screen, I get the urge to increase the numbers there. Every time I think about going the safe route, flashes of fighting—the excitement I get from it—cloud my thinking.
I think I might be kind of a crazy person.
“Remi Graves, you are crazy for wanting to go out and seek fights. Is this truly what you want?”
I don’t know how long I stood there, watching the sunrise, but eventually I whispered to myself,
“…Yes, it is.”
Well, fuck. I guess I won’t live to see old age. Let’s hope that delving the portal makes me rethink, but knowing myself, it’ll probably do the opposite.
Now, however… let’s go swimming, because damn, I’ve missed water.
Should I fit a small swimming pool into the ship? The 4th floor is quite empty right now. So, maybe. We will see if nothing else necessary comes up that will take up the space.
For now, let’s go and relax.