Arnora was a small town north and was covered in snow for the major part of the year.
Opening up the mini-map I started walking towards the woods Ms Brooke spoke of.
The objective was to collect a herb called Drayestra. This herb allowed for the user to either awaken an elemental affinity or increase the experience gained from the next battle to a certain extent. Although it sounded amazing there was a major drawback, this herb could only be consumed once. As this herb only grew in very cold climates, it was one of the ways the orphanage made money to support themselves.
As the children approached the age of 10, their skills would then be measured by agents sent by the kingdom to select a suitable profession. Kids with high elemental affinity or strength would then set out towards the Academy or work as soldiers or mercenaries whereas the others would take to become a farmer or a labourer.
With my current abilities, I was sure that I would only be lucky if I got selected to be a farmer.
Although there were other professions like scholars and businessmen, no one would be expecting a kid from a rural town to be knowledgeable in those areas.
As I reached the entrance of the woods, I was able to spot some of the other children from the orphanage.
Some showed a bit of disdain in their eyes. I guess this was because I never really helped except for basic things in the orphanage.
Collecting the small cart full of herbs, I headed back to the orphanage. This time I could see the road showing properly in the mini-map. The fog disappeared around the area I travelled by.
As my mana was full again, I tried to use Distort on one of the herbs.
Luckily the skill worked this time. Several parameters showed up again as before.
But there were only 2 that caught my attention
-isStackable
-conditionOfUse
The first one when set as true allowed multiple consumptions of that item to have a multiplier effect whereas the second one was literally the condition for the item to work.
First, I tried to change isStackable as true. Unfortunately the skill failed. Even at full mana capacity I was not able to change this as true.
Coming up with a quick idea, I tried to change the condition of use from "any user who hasn't consumed before" to "user Noah".
Sadly this didn't work. I waited for half an hour for my mana to fill up again and retried the skill. Unfortunately, it still didn't work.
After multiple tries I finally got it working with the condition as "for user Noah when he is at level 1".
This condition itself took more than half of my mana capacity, the only silver lining was that it worked.
After this, I tried to distort the isStackable one more time to true once more after my mana filled up. This time the skill activated depleting all my mana.
As I reached the orphanage, I quickly hid the distorted herb in my inventory and walked in.
I could hear Miss Brooke and the town messenger speaking in the office.
"So they are coming over by the end of this week for the talent measurement?"
"Yea…"
"They'll drop off the new orphans as well."
Noticing me eavesdropping on their conversation the messenger pointed at me, "what about that kid?"
"Oh him," Miss Brooke sighed, "he'll probably get sent to work as a servant somewhere…"
'I guess I need to work hard to surprise them.'
Dropping the herbs at the counter, I headed back to the woods with the cart.
The easiest way to get selected to be an academic would be to raise elemental affinity as this won't cause any suspicion.
If I were to raise my level and other attributes, I might receive unnecessary scorn. I also need to find out how I got poisoned as well. On the plus side, if the officer were to identify me as a blessed child that wasn't able to reach his potential because of poisoning, I can probably get the help of the enforcers to investigate faster.
Making a mental picture of my plan to consume as many herbs as possible whilst not getting caught, I went back into the woods.
Repeating this process I was able to distort 5 herbs on the trip and hid another five in my pockets to distort later. To distort both properties it took me around an hour in total which didn't seem bad.
Stashing all the distorted herbs under my bed, I repeated this until the day the priest and enforcers came for talent assessment.
I didn't consume the herbs till now for a very simple reason. The condition of use required me to be at level 1. If I were to accidentally gain even 1 exp from moving the cart, with the power of the multiplier I might reach level 2 which right now wasn't a good thing. It was do or die.
Midnight before the day of the test, after carefully checking whether others were asleep I went underneath the bed and started taking the herbs one by one.
With each herb, I was greeted with a pleasant message.
Drayestra herb consumed: gained 10% additional experience boost for next growth.
Drayestra herb consumed: gained 5% additional experience boost for next growth.
Drayestra herb consumed: gained 1% additional affinity towards water element. Awakened new elemental affinity!
Drayestra herb consumed: gained 1% additional experience boost for next growth.
Drayestra herb consumed: gained 5% additional affinity towards ice element. Awakened new elemental affinity!
…
By the end of it, I was not able to stop myself from laughing.
As the exp gains were stacked on top of the other this meant that I essentially got original exp times additional 10% times additional 5% times the next one and it was the same for elemental affinity.
Through sheer chance, I was able to gain affinity for water, wind, ice, psychic and divinity.
[Name: Noah
Level: 1 (15/100) (Multiplier: x6)
Class: None
Title: None
Grade: G-
State: Poisoned
Affinity:
Fire: 10% Water: 5%
Wind: 7% Ice: 5%
Psychic: 3% Divinity: 1%
Health: 20/100 Mana: 100/100
Strength: 15 Stamina: 20
Agility: 10 Intelligence: 15
Dexterity: 5 Charm: 5
Luck: 1
Stat Points: 0]
Although affinity could be increased with practice, awakening affinity was very difficult, especially for rare elements like psychic and divinity.
With all preparation done, I only had to wait a few more hours to escape from here.