{ Bright Mind - You are a young pup, but your impressionable mind allows you to soak up all kinds of information quickly. You learn things 4x faster than other Wolves and are able to learn from other species as well.
- You learn things 4x faster, increasing your mana and intelligence stats 4 times more every level up
- Language Learning (E) - You are able to understand other languages, regardless of species barriers }
This title was the reason why her intelligence and mana were so high, even compared to a human like him. He wasn't sure exactly how many points her E rank intelligence was, but if she was E rank as a level 1, then earned another 4 points through the Bright Mind title after leveling up, then she at least had 14 points, but that was the minimum.
She may already be smarted than her master.
That was a stretch of course, as she was only a few months old and probably only had the capacity of a pre-teen on a good day. As she grew though, she would definitely become more and more human to the point that she couldn't even be considered a monster anymore, and the system would definitely speed up that process.
The biggest treasure with this title however, was the skill attached to it. Language Learning (E) was most likely what allowed them to communicate in the first place, albeit barely. He had no idea how she was able to use the skill so well at such a young age but it was great for him because he could now borrow it.
{ Puppy Dog Eyes (F) - You are cute and you know it. You can turn your cuteness into a weapon to distract your enemies.
- Your cuteness charms your enemies, giving them a slight decrease in Mental stability }
{ Mana Bolt (F) - A Bolt of pure mana that deals a fixed amount of Magic Power based on the amount of mana spent to cast.
5 Magic Power
Cost: 5 mana }
She also had the skills Puppy Dog Eyes and Mana Bolt, but Puppy Dog Eyes was useless and he wouldn't have enough mana to make use of the skill spell effectively. Skill Spells were a category of skills in the system that could be learned outside of practicing the skill yourself.
This meant that by reading a skill scroll, a scroll that holds a specific spell, or other items that function similarly you can imprint its contents into your brain/soul, and instantly learn it. It didn't require practice and could be learned by anyone as long as they had the intelligence stat necessary and the mana to use it.
As skill spells became more complex, more prerequisites were required to complete in order to learn it but it was a much quicker way to learn a skill than to constantly practice mana bolt from scratch.
And for how things like Magic Power in general was calculated, that had to do with the hidden stats that took time and research to figure out on your own. Leon wasn't 100% sure about how it worked, but he expected Magic Power to be related to Mana or Intelligence, and Attack.
The reason he thought Attack was part of it was due to his first magic related skill, Arc Strike. The skill dealt Magic Power in proportion to his base Attack stat. While that was only a conjecture until he was able to gain that knowledge through the 'Don't ignore me!' skill, it didn't seem like a bad guess.
If it was anything like the little bits of knowledge he knew on video games, there were also stats like magic resistance, mana recovery, stamina, agility, etc. that may not necessarily be included in the system, but could also just be hidden to the Players.
Hidden stats were something he really wanted to research as well, as it was best to know everything about yourself so you knew what your full limits were rather than hoping and praying to survive something.
Moving on, the big question Leon had then, was how did this pup learn a skill spell already?
It couldn't read any languages, as it was a wolf and the E rank skill it had was related to spoken language, not written language.
When posed with the question, Kona replied:
*arf!* *arf!*
As he already knew what skill he wanted to borrow from her then, he chose Language Learning (E) as it would be a very useful skill down the line. It was strange to hear the barking of a canine one second, then to interpret it as English the next.
It would be very confusing at first, but as the man and pup continued to speak to each other, it would become more comfortable and her barking was already beginning to seem more like regular speech.
Her answer was surprising though, since he didn't know how a monster could learn a magic skill like that on its own in such a short time but he had let Kona choose her end of the deal and talk to the system about it later.
As Kona couldn't read, Leon asked her which stat she wanted to borrow from him. He could have chosen himself as he was the Tamer, the higher ranked awakened out of the two, and had more privileges than her in this deal. However he wasn't going to babysit her and watch over her like a hawk.
If she wanted to stay by his side, she would need to pull her weight, and that included being able to make her own decisions without him needing to say anything to her first. Especially now that she was given a great opportunity as a tamed monster to grow faster.
*arf!*
It wasn't a bad choice, considering all her stats were low but speed was an important one that could get her out of a tight situation if she needed. He probably would have chosen Attack, only because it was his highest base stat next to intelligence, which she already had, and she wouldn't be able to kill anything with it being so low but speed was probably the next best.
With the surprise that was the Taming ritual done, Leon then sat down and asked the system a ton of questions about his stats, Kona's and how 'Players' and 'Monsters' were treated differently.
The reason he asked this was because he noticed from when he forced her to kill a rabbit he caught, she immediately jumped to level 2. From his experience killing level 1 rabbits, they only granted him +2 exp. That was not enough for him to jump from level 1 to level 2 unless he had killed something like a deer as well, which gave +3 exp.
While it was possible for something like that to happen, where Kona had already killed another animal previously, with her terrible stats it was suspicious. His suspicions were only confirmed, when he gained access to her status page through the Monster Taming skill.
She had a lower exp threshold.
At level 2, her exp was 1/13 rather than 1/25 like it was for himself. And what was the bratty system's explanation for all of this? "Fairness."
In its efforts to provide "complete fairness" to all walks of life, except for a few instances with himself and others who were favored, the system worked to provide all walks of life an equal opportunity to become strong and evolve over time.
For humans and most other humanoid races across the Universe, if they had a system like earth did, levels and exp thresholds increased as such:
1 - 5 exp
2 - 25 exp
3 - 125 exp
4 - 250 exp
5 - 500 exp
6 -750 exp
7 -1000 exp
8 -1250 exp
9 -1500 exp
10 -1750 exp
etc.
The brat only gave him the first 10 levels for humanoids, but mentioned that this pattern continued on for quite a while and he didn't need to worry about it. At level 1, he need 5 exp, which he got through killing a level 1 wolf that gave him that exact amount.
At level 2 though and also level 3, it was increased by a factor of 5, meaning he would have to kill 5 level 1 wolves like he did to reach level 3, and kill 25 level 1 wolves in order to reach level 4. Or, he could have killed a higher level animal like he did to earn more exp for one kill and various combinations of other animals.
Kona's mother was worth +25 exp when looking back in the logs he had at that time, showing that with every level up, humans at least, earned +5 extra exp for every level above 1 a wolf had.
After he had finished this conversation with the system, he also went out and did his own field test to prove it was the same for other animals. It took him a while to finish since several animals were harder to find, but he ended up finding out:
wolf:
-lvl 1- +5 exp
-lvl 2- +10 exp
-lvl 3- +15 exp
etc.
Deer:
-lvl 1- +3 exp
-lvl 2- +6 exp
-lvl 3- +9 exp
etc.
Rabbit:
-lvl 1- +2 exp
-lvl 2- +4 exp
-lvl 3- +6 exp
etc.
Bird:
-lvl 1- +4 exp
-lvl 2- +8 exp
-lvl 3- +12 exp
etc.
Bear:
-lvl 1- +8 exp
-lvl 2- +16 exp
-lvl 3- +24 exp
etc.
Not all animals were valued the same, as some were weaker than others naturally while some were stronger naturally but what was consistent was that they all increased by a multiple of the based number for a level 1 monster. He had killed mostly wolves and deer, which made it quite easy for him to shoot up to level 4, but was it the same way for monsters?
With this new information in hand, he compared it to what the system told him and he couldn't help but be jealous of the pup.