{Would you like to spend 51.200 points and 12 special points to have Stealth (Common) and Martial arts (Common) be raised to Master level of proficiency?}
'Yes'
{Would you like to spend 400 points to have Dodge (Common) be raised to Apprentice level of proficiency?}
{Would you like to spend 1200 points to have Dodge (Common) be raised to Journeyman level of proficiency?
{Would you like to spend 3600 points and 1 special point to have Dodge (Common) be raised to Senior level of proficiency?
{Would you like to spend 7200 points and 2 special points to have Dodge (Common) be raised to Pro level of proficiency?
{Would you like to spend 14400 points and 3 special points to have Dodge (Common) be raised to Master level of proficiency?
'Yes'
The stream of power and grownth filled Aki, though a couple of advancements ended up not actually doing anything to his status, each parameter was now at or above E rank, dexterity having reached D rank despite it's initial lackluster.
"Three levels granting one point, three levels granting two points, let's hope that also works with the higher rarity skills. A second ability at the fifth level and a level up of the first in the sixth is still great though." He commented under his breath, his body full of energy and suddenly diving into the next dungeon straight away didn't seem like that bad an idea anymore.
With a deep breath, Aki instead dropped to the ground started doing the most challenging yoga possitions he could think off, his body following his mental commands with maestry and finesse, balance being kept as he entered a position to shoot a bow with his feet, become some kind of strange geometrical form on the ground, and even jump in one feet as his hand held the other...
It was disgustingly awesome!
Worst yet, he could actually turn more Sp into points and pay 21.6k points and 4Sp to upgrade one of his skills to grandmaster even. If only he could pay to upgrade his Uncommon skills or his rare skill, he might not even care about the cost, but no, apparently he could not do that because he'd not learned any of them through skill books, though Common rated skills were still fine. He could either find a skill book, which was highly unlikely to most of his self taught skills, or he could improve them himself, which was going to be hard and need plenty of experimentation.
Said experimentation would, however, have him stuck inside his lobby in fear of being shot down for one reason or another.
Luckily, he could see several books on different subjects being sold, nevermind his skill on medical knowledge came from normal books he'd been reading in preparation for university, which ment he likely could find something that would help him in the normal internet, his much higher score of intelligence, and to a lesser degree dexterity and spirit, would have him learning in a pace completely unthinkable to a normal human being!
"Oni-san, okite okite! Asa da mou!" Excitedly said the small asian girl that'd climbed the sofa and was currently doing her best to shake him, which innardvertly took him away from his browsing of the forums.
He'd be a happy big brother delighted in his little sister's squealing as she was caught in his trap of tickles for some more time before thinking of something serious again though.
*****
A seemingly unintended side effect of having a very high dexterity score was that it ment you touched a lot less poo when learning to change diapers. Barf was still, however, something completely inevitable at such distances, though it only happened one time.
His baby brother was mighty adorable with his constantly curious gaze towards him, but his sister was too hiperactive and jealous to share, having the three always spending time together, though he was apparently spoiling her with attention, learning the name of each and every toy she had, where to put them, watching several magic girls shows with her (He almost fucked it up by mentioning Madoka, but ultimately she was hooked into watching sailor moon instead of other recommendations.) and such.
His mother in law was quite happy they had bonded so easily and more than willing to teach him the ropes of taking care of them too, including some basic cooking recipes he actually had great trouble learning.
It took a few days of living together, but he now perfectly understood how the woman in question had stayed married to his father for even longer than his own mother. She was soft and caring most of the time, nevermind calm and hard to anger, sure, but when they got to the bedroom...
"I said left flank!"
"Stop screaming at me and take the point!"
"I'm being shot jackass!"
Her english was quite good too, thought she seemed to use it mostly for cursing in front of the children. His mother would never have this kind of partnership with that man, so Arthur and Liz would likely have a stable household to grown up in despite who their father was.
He'd been lucky to have a big family of five to support his mother and his paternal grandparents sending pension on the regular, but Fernanda's family wasn't as united, so it was good that guy had stayed and settled down.
On a more game related note, his attribute increase actually reduced the amount of sleep he needed, so he spent quite a few hours reading up on medical books, which had become so much easier to memorise!
He knew biology and general cell work since he'd literally just finished high school, but using the chance to brush up some knowledge made him receive several notifications about his knowledge increasing, saying that after a certain amount his skill level would go up.
By the time he passed through all the things he could find in the internet however, including some more exoteric uses of herbs and even acumpuncture, the skill was still in the on the brisk of leveling up.
That left him with two options for this role of advancement, his eyes taking on a more ruthless tone as he stated at the ceiling moments before dawn.
He would either benefit from direct practice or from magically emulating medicine, the former for proficiency training and the later for increasing the skill rarity.
As he looked with determination towards the skill in question however, he noticed a problem. It read as medical knowledge about humans. The XXI century had already completely mapped the human genome, so why was his skill still at apprentice rank after he properly learned all of that?
Either the system was penalising him for not practicing the skill and keeping only to the theoretical part, which made sense on the part that he did not know how the use of most of his knowledge was in actual practice, having only taking care of light bullet wounds and gashes, or he did not, in fact, know all there was to know about the human body.
How did hemoglobins react to being over charged with spirit energy? Could he infuse white cells to search for specific components and attack them despite not originally doing so? Raise plasma production, water absorption, absorb toxic dejects... completely eliminate the creation of fecal matter, manually heighten muscle and bone density, increase normal heart rate and blood flow on sturdier blood vessels...
He did not dare use himself as a test subject though. The player lobby had the function of not allowing for deaths or aggressive actions inside of it, but if he was just messing around and exploded his inner organs, then he'd instead have to pay to be cured back to perfect health, the note on that part even being written in bigger, darker font than the rest.
Aki never thought he'd one day enjoy medical study as he did now though, the possibilities were simply exiliriating!
His mana pool would not be enough for such things for a long while yet, sure, but his substitute to morning coffee should have clued him on the possibilities before he spent a week on the subject. That had been his own narrow sightedness.
*****
Convincing his father he needed some alone time so he'd let him borrow enough to spend a couple of hours walking around or so was quite easy, the man had always considered dealing with children a difficult task after all, so him taking care of his siblings had him making certain assumptions on his son's patience nearing it's limit. They were similar in far too many aspects after all.
One day he would tell his father he was actually playing a death game, if he didn't find news about that fucking things up at the very least, though his mother was a no go on that front either way.
Just on the tutorial he'd killed over a hundred humans, nevermind in the future. He'd immediately be dissowned.
Such thoughts filled his mind as Aki entered a coffee shop where he then rented a private room for two hours after ordering an ice cream. He'd even taken a subway alone to get here, having followed the internet's maps, which was a surprisingly easy task with his improved memory.
A bit later, he finally found himself at his player lobby again. While he didn't have to wait for one week after the tutorial to get to his first dungeon, he still had a life outside the game, so it felt right to do just that. He'd only be in Japan for a month at most, so he would not be able to have too many moments with his siblins, he did cherish even the time they'd already spent together.
He still had his own life to live though.
With a smile, Aki brought out a knife and made a small cut on the side of his arm. Flexing his arm, he raised the amount of energy around the wound, pressing his cells to regenerate until it closed with speed visible to the naked eye. He'd spent three Mp on that. Smiling even harder, the young man ignored the pain and carved a gash on the upside of his left arm.
Taking ten points of mana, he imagined the wound closing, the flesh knitting, vessels reuniting, muscles reataching, perfect skin encapsuling everything...
{'Adrenaline boost' has reached Apprentice level of proficiency}
{Detected forced evolution! Adrenaline boost: Aprentice (Uncommon) has become Spirit healing: Beginner (Rare)! All stats retained! VIT, SPR and INT increased by 3!}
Looking through his menu, Aki could see that his Hp had recovered a bit from his actual attempt at healing magic, though it'd not reached full. Both his first aid and medicine skill had gone up in level as well, meaning he now had plenty more stats. This much was going to need to be enough. He didn't have the patience to try and keep improving until his whole free month had passed!
Backing up to the first lines of his status, he looked at the '+' sign next to his level and mentally confirmed.
{You have leveled up! Updating resources!}
ID: Aki
Level: 1 +
Sp: 14
Gp: 10
Points: 1.000
Hp 46/46
Mp 50/50
STR: 29 (E)
DEX: 41 (D)
VIT: 38 (D-)
PER: 34 (E+)
INT: 36 (D-)
SPR: 38 (D-)
Skills:
Mental corruption (Uncommon) INT\SPR
Intimidation (Uncommon) INT\ SPR
Stealth: Master (Common) DEX\PER
Knife work: Apprentice (Common) DEX
Light firearms: Apprentice (Common) DEX\PER
Heavy firearms: Journeyman (Common)
DEX\STR
Light sleeping: Beginner (Common) PER
Spirit detection: Apprentice (Uncommon) PER\SPR
First aid: Journeyman (Common) VIT
Medical knowledge-human: Journeyman (Uncommon) VIT\ INT
Spirit healing: Beginner (Rare) SPR\VIT\INT
Martial arts: Master (Common) STR\DEX\VIT
Spirit slash: Beginner (Uncommon) SPR\DEX
Spirit strike: Apprentice (Uncommon) SPR\STR
Mystical knowledge-spirit: Apprentice (Uncommon) INT\SPR
Bargaining: Beginner (Common) INT
Meditation: Apprentice (Common) SPR
Spirit reinforcement: Beginner (Rare) SPR\STR\VIT\INT
Dodging: Master (Common) DEX\PER
Combat throw: Beginner (Common) DEX\STR
Descriptions:
[Light firearms: Apprentice - You know how to better utilise side arms, handguns, light machineguns and such better. When reloading with a light firearm, your dexterity is bumped one rank higher.]
[Stealth: Master - You know how to be undetectable to most means of perception.
1. While in stealth any undetected attacks will temporarily stun the target and have them make less noise.
2. Attacks against weak points gain a 1.5 times damage multiplier.]
[Heavy firearms: Journeyman - You know how to better utilise sniper rifles, miniguns, RPGs and the like. When aiming with a heavy firearm, your dexterity is bumped one rank higher.]
[Knife work: Apprentice - You know how to better utilise knifes and small daggers. When you cut an enemy with a small blade, they will bleed 10% (30%* if human) more] (Bonus affected by knowledge skill.)
[Medical knowledge-human: Journeyman - You studied how to better treat all sorts of human maladies and understands their body. Your patient's vitality is bumped one rank higher while being treated.]
[First aid: Journeyman - You know how to apply your medical knowledge on the field. Your dexterity is raised by one rank when treating recent injuries.]
[Spirit detection: Apprentice - You can use your spiritual energy to understand your surroundings. Your spiritual energy can now narrowly perceive spiritual beings and related energies.]
[Martial arts: Master - You know how to use your body as a fearsome weapon.
1. Your kicking attacks gain a two rank bump in strength.
2. Successive kicks after the first one will accumulate force, and add +1 and +2 to the speed of the attack during the second and third kick.]
[Meditation: Apprentice - You are more in tune with yourself. You recover a slight amount more quickly while meditating.]
[Spirit strike: Apprentice - You can launch your spiritual energy out of your body when dealing a strike to cause a feeble rank attack. Your spiritual energy can be launched a meter further.]
[Mystical knowledge-spirit: Apprentice - You studied your own and other's spirits through your own skills and understands how to affect the physical realm with spiritual energy. Your spirit receives a one rank bump in any check.]
[Dodging: Master - You know how to elude your enemies' attacks.
1. You receive a two rank bump in perception as you dodge attacks.
2. You are more likely to sense unseen attacks.]
He could level up again, because aparently that was determined by the amount of points you ever received through dungeons or trading, but aparently, your final rating would be reduced by the amount of levels you are above a dungeon in dificulty, and you could not improve your level while in a dungeon, so people stayed in the same level as their number of dungeon runs so as to not get screwed over one way or another.
It was also because of the amount of attributes you had when you leveled determined the increase of resources per level, but overall, it was actually easier to pay for a treasure that would allow for your resources to be raised than to let your rating be reduced, nevermind that some skills related to bloodlines and body cultivation allowed for constant upgrading of resources, which made them quite the hot sale on the forums.
He had a dungeon to run though, and he'd been unable to find something he could buy that would actually stay relevant in the long run, so he decided he didn't need to buy a stop gap just yet.