[AN: Skipping this chapter is fine. Here is a summary, Aaron learns about the levels of skills, stats, and that he has a training area to regain the practical knowledge lost due to not having actually used any of the skills/abilities. And starts to practice. ]
'Starting basics tutorial.'
Everything around Aaron disappeared and was replaced with nothingness. He was standing on a 30 meter diameter white circle, but that was it, there was nothing else here.
'Greetings User. I am Subsystem, my tasks are to show you gathered data about yourself, any missions you have, and guide/push you on you path of evil. I am linked to many systems under Existence, but only to gather data about missions and evaluation of skills/abilities/items. User's current location is the training area. The User may use this area to train any skills any abilities he aquires to the same level as the body User aquired them from. User will not be able to train beyond the level aquired within the training area as User does not actually have the experience of levels beyond. If User gains similar abilities/skills, the level cap will be the highest leveled ability/skill.'
'Oh, so basically if I get the abilities of alchemy from another person, and that is higher than the one I currently have, I can practice in here to that other person's level. But because I don't know about the higher levels beyond that other person, I can't train beyond that. Is that correct?' Aaron asked after getting the gist of it.
'User is correct. The training area is mainly to supplement the practical knowledge lost on absorption.'
'How was I able to use illusions on the map then?' Aaron asked what seemed to be contradiction the subsystem said.
'User has theoretical knowledge, and User used the most basic of illusions, combined your successes rate was 99%. If User had tried to make an illusion to completely hide the map, or trap anyone other than User entering the cave, User would have failed 100% of the time. There would be too many imperfections that would result in the illuions unraveling themselves.'
'Ah. okay. That makes sense. Its like programming, what I did was just "Hello World" where as completely hiding the map a fully finished program. And this training area basically lets me practice my skills/abilties from someone learning to program to someone that knows how to program. But one thing I want to know is about skills themselves, how are they ranked? How will I know a good skill vs a bad one?'
'Well, to start with no skill is bad. At least in the view of the systems that manage them. It is just a matter or application and refinement of said skills. Before I continue you need to understand the rankings. There are basically six different rankings, and the first three are split into subrankings. Starting at the lowest is fundamental, common, tiered, mythic, worldly, and godlike. Both fundamental and common are separated into low or base, intermediate, and complete. Tiered is separated into 9 subranks, one through nine, with nine being the most powerful. There is no subranks to mythic, worldly or godlike, but most intelligent beings within existence have applied low, intermediate, high, and peak to them. But the truth is that they are all the same, for example two different healing skills one the intelligent beings rate at peak and one at low do the exact same amount of healing and in the same way, but the one rated at peak uses less energy due to being more refined the one ranked low. With more refinement, the low ranked will have the same costs. According to the systems that manage skills/abilties, the first two levels are embryonic and growth. The three following them are refinement realms, while the final, godlike, is the peak possible for said skills/abilties. And that is regardless of what the intelligent beings think. They have tried to improve on godlike skills/abilties, but all they are doing to changing it to a different skill/ability all together.'
'Okay. So what about levels and stats? How are those based? And what is a variant or dreg? I saw that my body is a variant while my soul is a dreg.'
'Stats are based on the average human level. There isn't really a way to describe in details about it due to the system that governs them as confidential. But what is summarized as average of humans. So best way to think about is to compare two humans and take the average between them. Technically, the stats are ever changing in actual practice, but the stats assigned will not change. Now for levels, levels are just like what you think, think of any RPG from Earth. The only difference is the categories or zones. From lowest to highest you have dregs, mortal, variant, elite, superior, king, immortal, and wielder of the forces. Each zone has a level requirement expect for dregs, and there is no level limit. The zones are based around purity, and ability to handle energies. Zones do not mean that a being from a lower zone cannot defeat a being from a higher zone. A level 100 dreg can destroy a level 1 wielder of the forces.'
'Hmm... okay I get the gist of it. I guess I will have to start practicing then, will it effect the time outside? Like we've spent about an hour here.'
'No the training area is outside of time, and has no effect on anything inside time. So you will not be able to come here to avoid danger or heal.'
'So, I could come here to plan out things though. Guess I should start practicing then'