Almost before Natalie knew it, the first week of classes had passed, and the weekend was on her.
Not that the weekend meant time to rest. Though pleased she hadn't embarrassed herself with her debut spars, she had a long way to go, and not for spellcasting alone. Her more traditional skillsets needed work. Failure in the dungeon meant endangering her, Jordan, Sofia, and her other teammate's lives. Natalie had zero intention of resting on her laurels. A mindset, she assumed, shared with most of Tenet's studentbase.
So, she set a more brutal pace during the weekend than the schoolweek itself. Without a long break of academics and an enforced lunch hour to hamper her, she worked herself to exhaustion. It wasn't an unfamiliar process. She wouldn't have ever qualified for Tenet if so.
Once those grueling training hours were completed, she met with Jordan. Unlike their typical post-workout sessions, though, they took a more focused approach. Instead of collecting energy—though that would happen shortly—they focused first on strategy.
Natalie had been making steady progress filling up her Carnal Energy resource. She had yet to expend it on anything since her first-to-second advancement of Carnal Harvest. They'd wanted to see whether the resource decayed slowly, encouraging her to spend it rather than hoarding. As it turned out, no. Hence Natalie's consistent generation—because the next question had been whether there was a cap. Perhaps there was a large one, but in the days she'd steadily been collecting, she hadn't brushed against the limit.
"Okay," Jordan asked. "How much do you have, again?"
***
Carnal Energy: 122
***
"One twenty-two," Natalie said. "Probably enough to take everything up a tier. Maybe kick harvest up once, but probably not."
The excitement of the first week of classes had had Natalie pushing off from making a decision. There'd been practical reasons to hoard and not choose what to advance, like wanting to see if there was point decay or limits in place, but she couldn't persist with that test forever. With the dungeon opening tomorrow, it was time she decided how to allocate the points she'd earned.
They had, of course, talked about what Natalie should do, but there were good arguments for multiple paths. Keep rushing Carnal Harvest, thus advancing how quickly she earned further points? Advance Illusion, maybe making the skill easier, and certainly more powerful?
Or even Heavy Weaponry, that amusingly—and aggravatingly—named skill. The two of them had a hunch that progressing the skill wouldn't only come with a size increase.
"I think taking everything forward once is smart," Jordan said. "It's cheap, and Illusion and Empower will be useful for the dungeon. But you should keep a healthy reserve. Being able to catch up your level two skills as soon as they come will be nice."
The last strong point for building up a backlog, rather than rushing advancement. Not only was having Carnal Energy on hand for when she needed to Empower skills smart, possibly saving them down in the dungeon, but when the day came that Natalie hit level two, and received new skills, having plenty of Carnal Energy on hand to progress them—assuming they were useful enough to justify it—would be extremely practical.
But, she shouldn't be a total hoarder, either. Advancing each skill once, as Jordan suggested, would be a good compromise. She'd have plenty of energy left over, but would also boost relevant skills for their upcoming delve.
"Yeah," Natalie said. "Figured that'd be the best move. I'll do it, then, unless …?" She waited a moment for Jordan to interject any last opinions, but she waved for Natalie to hurry up.
Seizing control of that strange energy, she activated [Advance], funneling enigmatic pink ribbons inside her brain—a sensation purely imagined, but vivid, lifelike—into the first of the relevant skills.
***
[Empower]: Progression advanced from 1 to 2.
***
***
[Empower] - ACTIVE. PROGRESSION 2. Amplify the potency of any ACTIVE or AURA skill by {2.0x}. Expend Carnal Energy equivalent to mana cost.
***
"Went from one point five to two," Natalie said.
"Mm," Jordan said. "Doubles the strength of a skill. I could see that becoming …" she trailed off.
"Incredible," Natalie said bluntly. "With higher level skills? Doubling their strength?"
"More, as you progress Empower even further. Triple? Four times?"
Though Natalie had yet to see the realization of the claim, when she'd received her class, The Bestower had told her that she'd gotten a, if strange, exceptionally powerful class. Even if it hadn't turned out true yet, it certainly would in the future. Doubling the strength of a skill. Unless Natalie received abysmal base skills in the future—and she doubted that—then Empower would become outrageously useful.
"But it costs experience, basically," Natalie said.
Strong as the skill was, it came with heavy downsides. She'd yet to experiment with it, but fundamentally, the skill used up Carnal Energy. It used up her 'alternate progression points'—so, equivalently, she had to spend experience to activate it.
"It should only be used when necessary," Jordan agreed. "Still. Depending on how expensive it is, the benefits could massively outweigh the cost. If it allows you to take down monsters out of your level range, then the bonus experience could more than make up for it."
"Sort of," Natalie said. "Guess it depends on whether Carnal Energy progression is more or less useful than normal levels."
"True," Jordan said. "And speaking of that, we should test the skill. It's a waste, but we need to know the cost, and the exact meaning of 'doubling' an illusion's potency."
That sort of thing was better learned beforehand, not in the moment. When tomorrow's delve began, Natalie wanted to have a strong hold of her capabilities—including her emergency options. While burning Carnal Energy, that slow to acquire and vitally useful resource, pained her, what would pain her a lot more was dying. Obviously. Or worse, getting someone else hurt.
"Yeah," Natalie said. "Let's finish leveling everything else up, first, though. Then we'll go test things out."
Jordan inclined her head, then gestured for her to continue.