Ding–!
[6U of Essence acquired!]
Exhale–
A calm breath escaped from my nostrils as soon as I received the notification.
It was nothing new to me any longer.
Soon, even this daily accession of six units of Essence would become a joke.
Crack–! Crack–!
Arching my back, satisfying moans escaped my lips as a good crackling sensation travelled down my spine, one vertebra after the other.
Sitting in one spot for hours was certainly not good for posture.
I felt quite stiff.
Even if it was momentary, it was something I couldn't neglect.
'Perhaps it's this bed,' I considered as I glanced at the hard material of the bed that we had been given when we arrived.
It was not bad for sleeping. However, it was also not so comfortable for the body.
'I might have to change it.'
My loud moans had drawn out suspicious glances from Bright, who had stayed in a frozen state, gazing blankly at me with disbelief.
As I met his gaze, he blinked twice in surprise at what had come out of my mouth.
"What?"
Bright shook his head in denial. "Nothing."
I shrugged my shoulders and stepped down from my bed, not bothered by whatever thoughts my roommate probably had of me now.
"Hey, Lux," Bright called out to me, his hand slightly reaching out.
I stopped and turned to the side acknowledging the utterance of my name.
"Yeah? What's up?"
Bright breathed a sigh and lowered his head a little.
I could already tell that his intentions to seek my help weighed heavily on his heart.
…Nonetheless, he needed it.
Even if he was a highly energetic person who, almost always, wants to know what your business is, Bright still understood boundaries… to some extent anyways.
He could tell when his jokes were excessive and when he was overreaching.
He had witnessed me sit and absorb Essence so many times that it was enough to draw his interest to what exactly I was always doing.
He could hazard a proper guess as to what I was doing.
Bright then raised his head and looked at me with a helpless expression.
"I need your advice."
I gave him a half-hearted smile as well as my undivided attention.
"Yeah? What's going on?"
Bright gestured for me to approach as he revealed his Cube ID with a 'Visible Mode' command.
Heading over, I sat beside him, waiting for him to throw the question open.
Bright cluelessly pointed at the empty space in front of the both of us, swiping his fingers randomly in the air as if he were touching an invisible screen, which he was.
I chuckled sarcastically.
"You know I can't see that, right?" I couldn't help but chip in.
Bright speedily turned and looked at me like I had said the most shocking thing to him.
"Serious?" he blurted out, his eyes almost gaping out of his sockets.
I nodded.
"My bad. So sor—"
"Just tell your ID to reveal by saying 'Show'. Your profile is still in Hide Mode. So only you can see it at the moment. If you use the 'Show' word command, then others can see it too. Don't forget to put it back in Hide Mode when you're done though."
"Oohhh!"
Bright was wowed by how much I knew. However, that much was not enough to raise any undue suspicion.
"How do you know so much anyway?" he asked.
I sighed and massaged my forehead. "I asked the Instructors."
Bright held his chin with a look of disappointment in himself.
It was like he was ignorant about something that he could have easily found out.
He then shrugged and returned to his normal high spirit.
"Show Status," he said.
Bzzt–!
A similar status screen to mine appeared in front of us, leaning more towards Bright as his data appeared.
I looked at it critically and saw that Bright had yet to distribute his some acquired Essence into any of his Attributes.
That was why he needed my advice.
"So what's up?" I asked, flowing with him.
The white-haired boy scratched his chin and alternated his eyes between me and his Status Window.
—––
[Profile]
Name: Bright Holden
Stage: Ore Stage
Step: Initial
Skill: [Light of the Morning]
Essence: 38/200
—––
[Statistics]
Strength: 2
Agility: 6
Focus: 2
—––
He looked at me and continued to speak.
"I feel like I have to boost other Attributes and not just my Agility Attribute. Well, yes, I have a speed-based skill but it feels incomplete with my Strength and Focus Attributes lacking."
I concurred with his worries, since I was also in the same one-sided situation.
Nevertheless, my case was still somehow different from his.
"You're right," I said, nodding my head in agreement with Bright's line of thought. "Because no matter how fast you are, you can't overpower a slower but stronger opponent if you don't have the strength to match."
Snap–!
His fingers flashed before my eyes in a loud snap as he exclaimed. "Yes! Exactly! I knew you'd get it."
"So what says you?" he asked me, blinking several times than I could keep count of.
He looked at me like one would look to an older brother when they needed saving from a difficult situation.
"How do you advise I share the remaining twenty-eight units of Essence that I have?"
I looked at the floating, luminescent screen and then at my roommate and shrugged.
"I can't say. It's up to you what you want to do but I suggest you up the rest or at least make them all equal for now. It's not like we'd be facing any Dungeons or Monsters soon, hehe."
…Of course, we wouldn't.
So it didn't matter much now how one's Essence was distributed across the three Attributes.
At this stage, the worst that could happen was losing a fight to another trainee.
Bright's fingers were steadfast to his chin in deep thoughts with his eyes lost in the screen of his Status Window.
I looked at him and kept a calm expression.
Knowing what he would choose, I was satisfied and would agree with him that it was a better option for him for now.
Bright didn't need to distribute everything to one Attribute like I had done.
I had done this because the level of mastery I held to my skill depended heavily on how much I could absorb, control, understand and endure Essence within my bodily systems.
And it was the [Focus] Attribute that measured this.
A good number of the recruits had this false impression that the higher your Attribute Points, the stronger or faster you were.
Tsk! What a joke!
That was far from the case even.
…In fact, it was the reverse.
The stronger or faster you are, the higher your Attribute Points.
There was a general false assumption that the Attribute Points from Essence determined how strong one was.
That wasn't really how it worked. At least not after the Ore Stage.
Little did they know that the Attributes that they were seeing in their Data Profile were a numerical representation of what Essence was doing in their body.
The value of one's Essence was the true determinant of strength, speed and overall power as a Hunter and not that value of the individual Attributes.
Because of the way this worked, the Ore Stage of Essence Manipulation was vital and fundamental.
The Ore Stage was the time when a person's path in the Way of Essence was set.
It was during the Ore Stage that we could distribute our Essence by ourselves, but after that, the Attribute Stats simply became a reflection of our bodies' characteristics and mastery of Essence and not some set of numbers that could be manipulated.
…Like its name implies, we are ore which are yet to be reformed into something worthwhile.
For instance, if a Ore Stage Hunter poured more Essence into his [Strength] Attribute, invariably he is conditioning his body into becoming a power type hunter and a force of physical destruction.
What will happen then will be that the Essence he absorbs will prioritise the physical strength of his body over other parameters like speed and mental tenacity.
The same would apply to someone who focused more on his [Agility] or [Focus] Attributes.
However, this would come to change later on and be out of our hands as we would not be the ones to determine what the value of our Attributes would be.
…But that will be later, much later when one breaks into the Iron Stage.