01 initialization, p.10
01. Initialization, page 10
part #1 of Paths Of Power Series
Hope was the woman with the Tonfas and the archer from earlier. I had to learn how she got her Ki to shoot out like that.
Jamie Miller
Rogue Level 4
HP: 60/60
Stam: 128/182
Mana: 91/182
Nyla Coleman
Mage Level 3
HP:60/60
Stam: 100/100
Mana: 67/240
Nyla was their group healer, I wondered what else she had up her sleeve. Was she the one doing crowd control?
Sam Barnes
Cultivation body rank 2
HP: 60/60
Stam: 74/144
Ki: 20/100
Sam was another cultivator. He had the butterfly swords and had the look of a martial artist. Were the two cultivators siblings? Nope, no, there were not. Gods, I hoped they were not with the way they just began kissing each other. Probably husband and wife. They both looked incredibly fit, had smooth, practiced movements. Sam had an odd max stamina pool, though everyone else’s stamina seemed to be a simple ten per endurance, so always a round number. I’ll have to ask him about it. Perhaps he opened a different meridian than I did.
Thomas Caldwell
Faithful of Thor FR:2
HP:80/80
Stam: 40/120
DF: 8
Faithful of Thor? Well, I guess that would explain all the sparks and the hammer. A bit on the nose, but who am I to say. I have an ice-powered husky named Rukia. If all goes well, I’ll be able to learn a lot more about what to expect from the other two Paths of Power.
The warrior let me collect my spear, loot, and my pack then they all led me through the gate into their compound. I cleared out my prompts real quick. I managed to pick up the athletics skill and got an extra rank in polearms. Not much else, but then again, I didn’t even fight much in this battle, so it was expected.
[Character Sheet] [Companion Sheet] [Settlement Menu] [Interface options] [System]
John Baker character sheet
c320
Cultivation: Body Rank 2
Health points: 52/65
Health regeneration: 13/day
Stamina: 66/120
Stamina Regeneration: 12/minute
Ki: 90/100
Essence: 10/50
Defense: 15
Strength: 12
Dexterity: 17
Agility: 16
Constitution: 13
Endurance: 12
Intelligence: 14
Wisdom: 13
Resistance:
Disease 30%
Meridians:
Bone: +6 Agility, +5 Defense, +5 unarmed damage
Dermis: +6 Dexterity, +10 Defense, +30% disease resistance
Skills:
Athletics: Rank 3
Weapon smithing: Rank 3
First Aid: Rank 6
Grapple: Rank 1
Identify: Rank 4
Meditation: Rank 4
Polearms: Rank 3
Small Blades: Rank 1
Spiritual Sense: Rank 2
Stealth: Rank 3
Ki Skills:
Ki Smithing: Rank 1
Ki Imbuement: Rank 1
Special:
Bonded to Spirit Beast: You have bonded a Spirit beast. You and your Spirit Beast can always locate one another and share an empathic link, which allows for better understanding and alerts one when the other is in danger.
Unarmed attacks deal +5 (7)*(9)** damage
Ki Techniques:
Bone Knuckle Duster: Cost 5 Ki, +10 damage from unarmed attacks
(Cost is held, Ki returns to pool when technique ends)
Ki Healing (self) 1hp/Ki, 2 stam/Ki cost
Rukia character sheet
Breed: Siberian Husky/American Eskimo
Cultivation: Body Rank 4
Health points: 41/70
Health point Regen: 14/day
Stamina: 73/180
Stamina Regen: 18/minute
Ki: 85/152
Strength: 14
Dexterity: 14
Agility: 20
Constitution: 14
Endurance: 18
Intelligence: 5
Wisdom: 9
Defense: 10
Ice resistance: 50%
Special abilities:
Spirit Beast: is able to gather essence through fighting other beasts, and able to consume Beast cores to increase in power. Does not unlock meridians like sapient Cultivators, but grow more naturally in power as they gather essence.
Essence is automatically converted to Ki. Ki is stored in their Spirit Beast Core. Spirit beasts, unlike their human counterpart, can gain an element to their Ki once they reach their first rank. It will be a weak affinity, but will grow in strength as the Spirit beast rises in rank.
Bonded Spirit Beast: this spirit beast is bonded to a sapient Cultivator. The master and beast can always locate one another and share an empathic link, which allows for better understanding and alerts one when the other is in danger.
Elemental Affinity Ice: Minor
Skills:
Scent Tracking: Rank 2
Perception (hearing): Rank 5
Primal Combat: Rank 6
Cultivation abilities:
Charge: imbue your muscles and bones with Ki to create a burst of speed when you need it most.
Cost: 5 Ki
Effect: doubles movement speed for 3 seconds, x2 damage on strike while active.
Frost Fang: imbue your teeth with Ice Ki causing +2 damage per point of Ki, +2 points of stamina damage per point of Ki. .5% chance of slowing target by 20% for .5 seconds per point of Ki.
Frost Defense: stop 4pts of fire damage per point of Ki spent.
Attack: Bite 21 dmg (base 12 + 1/2 strength + 12% skill)
Chapter 10
The outside of the Truckstop building looked much the same, though the massive windows were replaced with solid walls. The most significant change was on the inside. The rows of shelves were gone, and the main room looked smaller, without the coolers for drinks in the back. It was like they had completely remodeled the whole Truckstop. It felt more like walking into a living room rather than a fancy convenient store. The biggest thing that caught me off guard was just how bright it was inside.
“I thought all tech stopped working? How do you have lights in here?” I asked
David let out a combination grunt and sigh as he set down his axe and shield near the door. “When I claimed this place as a settlement, I got to use some System credits to make a few upgrades.” He gestured at the glowing dome in the center of the ceiling, “it somehow runs on all that essence the System loves so much.”
“How in the bloody hell were you able to gather five thousand System Credits? I’ve only acquired….” I checked my sheet real quick since I hadn’t paid it too much attention. “Five hundred credits from the goblins, Fecking puma, and a hawk that tried to get me.”
“Five thousand? What? Oh, wait, yeah, I remember now. When you click on the settlement tab, it tells you to gather five people and five thousand credits. That’s apparently only one of the ways to start a settlement. If you wipe out a tribe of monsters, there is a chance you can get a city core. With a city core, you just need to find an appropriate building not covered or within a certain distance of another city’s territory, activate it, and it lets you do a bit of remodeling. Gives you some free system credits, too, for the upgrades.” David answered. “Between gaining essence from winning against monster attacks on our territory and loot we’ve sold, we managed to get quite a few creature comforts. Hold on for a second.”
David let out a whistle and called out to the back, “it’s ok, the goblins are gone now. C’mon hunter” the largest German Sheppard I’ve ever seen came trotting out of one of the back rooms, followed by three kids ranging from about four to seven years old. I gave them all a quick Identify.
Lewis Price
Alex Price
Emma Barnes
Hunter
Magic Beast (German Sheppard) level 5
HP: 90/90
Stam: 160/160
Mana: 130/130
“Wait, why don’t the Kids have a Path?” I was confused at the total lack of any information on the kids’ Identify window. The dog was quite strong, probably stronger than Rukia was, but it gave the usual details.
“That’s because the system doesn’t think children below eight have the cognitive ability to make that kind of choice, so it makes them wait until their eighth birthday.” Hope Barnes popped up with the answer as she checked over the kids, making sure they were ok. The little girl looked just like her. I was guessing that with the same last name, that it was her and Sam’s daughter. The other kid’s names didn’t match up with what I remembered of the other adults. They were probably orphans of this new world. Best to not bring that up just yet. It’s bound to have been less than five days since their parents died.
“Identify skill?” David asked
“Yeah, I picked it up on the first day; it’s already become something of a habit to identify everything. Doesn’t give much in detail, but lets me know their levels or ranks and hp and stuff,” I answered. “By the way, what did you mean, sell loot?”
“Oh, the City Core comes with its own marketplace interface. You can buy or sell all kinds of things, the items disappear from your hand when you choose to sell, and if you buy something, it just appears in a flash. We couldn’t sell the trash the goblins were carrying, although that shiny staff you got might go for a pretty penny. You can get decent money for spirit or mana cores if you don’t use them yourself. We managed to find some useful beginner guides that helped explain a lot.”
“What I wouldn’t have given for a guide to this shit show,” I said, bitterness leaking through my voice. “Are you guys all local here? I’m just trying to get back home to my wife and son.”
“Yeah, all of us are, well, except Tom here,” he gestured to the Thor follower guy “he was passing through when everything happened. So here, let’s have a seat and a cold drink. Want a beer or a soda? This place was pretty stocked when we took it over.” David gestured at the mismatched collections of sofas and chairs. I sat in a nice plush Lay-z-girl chair and let out a long groan. It has been almost a week since my ass pressed against something soft.
“No beer for me, thanks, never acquired the taste for bitter. I’ll have Dew, though.” I replied with a tired smile on my face.
We spent a good hour talking about everything that happened to us. First, I learned about a few of the system mechanics for settlements. Depending on the rank of your settlement, it had an area of influence that gathered Essence from everything daily. All the excellent features in their settlement, including the lights, refrigeration, AC, and others, consumed a certain amount of Essence per day as upkeep to keep them running.
The Essence that isn’t used by the upkeep is stored in the City Core and can be used as cash to make purchases through the System Market. The monster cores can be sold based on their converted essence value. The system pretty much equates one System Credit with one unit of Essence. There are worse things to establish a currency on, I suppose. I mean, the U.S. Dollar hasn’t been directly based on anything for quite a long time now. I wasn’t sure yet if my three hundred twenty credits were worth a lot or a little, but they said I could check out the market later if I wanted.
“You’re telling me you got a beginner guide to Ki cultivation?” the conversation had shifted to the Barnes and me. They are both martial arts enthusiasts and chose Ki with their familiarity with the cultivation stories of the orient.
Sam pulled out a small book from seeming nowhere and showed me the cover. “Hold the phone. Did you just pull that book from thin air? You have a storage ring or bag of holding or something like that?” I asked intently.
Sam chuckled and showed me a plain steel band around his middle finger; of course, he gave me the one-finger salute just because, and we both chuckled. “Yeah, managed to get a small storage ring for only about a hundred credits.”
“That is definitely on my list of things I need to get. My pack is none too light.” I said. “But back to that book, how much did it cost you, and was it any real help?”
“The Beginner Guides are relatively cheap. They cost about ten credits,” Hope said
“Did you get your weapons from the market too? I saw your bow shoot out Ki arrows. That was badass.” I asked
“Actually, we chose the soul-bound weapons as our perk options. They gained some Ki-based abilities that are quite handy, and they are supposed to improve with our cultivation base. But we won’t know by how much until we reach the Elemental Energy Stage. I take it you didn’t choose a soul-bound weapon as your perk?” Hope asked.
“It specified that it needed to be a weapon at hand, and I wasn’t going to soul bind my tire thumper or a pocket knife, so no, I didn’t choose that perk. I chose instead to have Rukia here become a spirit beast and to bond with her. You wouldn’t believe it, I know she is full husky size now, but she was half that size before everything happened.” I said while scratching Rukia behind her ears.
“The System said she doesn’t cultivate the same way as we do since she is only sentient instead of sapient. So she doesn’t have to muck about with Meridians and stuff. She just grows naturally and through eating spirit beast meat and cores. Speaking of Meridians, which ones did you two open, and what did you get from it? I opened my bone and skin meridians.”
“I opened the Dermal Meridian as well, but I also opened the Muscle Meridian. It boosted my strength, a bit of defense, and gave me a thirty percent boost to my stamina pool.” Sam said
“I opened the lung and heart meridians. They gave me endurance and constitution increases. The lung lets me cultivate faster by drawing more Essence in per breath and helps me resist things like smoke and other airborne toxins. The heart boosted my stamina regeneration and health regeneration. They don’t aid much in a stand-up fight. However, I can take more damage and heal faster. They are great for recovery.” Hope said. “The beginner’s guide actually lists all the meridians, with a diagram and everything, even telling you what bonuses we get for opening each. That reminds me, how did you open two of your meridians without the help of the guide? Or make that Ki infused spear?”
“Well, I read a lot of Xanxia novels along with a lot of gamelit and litrpg books. I actually couldn’t believe I was living through an actual System Apocalypse. Since the beginning, prompts said it was accessing our cultural history, and cultivation books are based on that… I just tried to do what the main characters in those books did for the most part. I got a short tutorial video of some kind the first time I accidentally inhaled Essence, and it gave me the fundamental rundown of what to do. I filled my core with Essence, squeezed it made Ki, then I just sort of pushed the Ki into the Meridian with all my might until it burst open.” I said with a shrug.
Hope and Sam looked at each other with a complicated look on their faces. Hope looked at me, and I could almost hear her thinking, oh honey. “You should really get yourself a copy of the guide. There is a much easier and less messy way of opening your meridians. Have you developed any Ki techniques yet? The book helps with that a bit too.” She said gently.
“Well, I created one technique by accident,” I said slowly. Then I held up my fist and used my Ki to extend the bone spikes from my Knuckles a good inch before retracting them and taking the Ki back. “I haven’t really had the chance to try it out in a fight. It’s mostly my emergency backup if I lose my spear.”
“You said your spear isn’t soul bound, but where did you get it? You couldn’t have bought it from the system store. This is the first settlement you came to, right?” Sam asked, his interest in my weapon evident.
“Well, at the end of the first day, I came across a farmhouse that Goblins attacked earlier. I only know that because a couple of goblin bodies were there, only splashes of human blood, no bodies. After we searched the property for any survivors, we found a forge set up in their barn. After hiding out in the storm cellar for the night, I used some of my previous smithing experience to make myself a much-needed weapon. I’m no expert in smithing or in fighting with any weapon, but the spear is supposed to be simple enough to use.”
I took a moment to drink then continued, “As for the Ki infused aspect of the blade, I was focusing hard on smithing, and I noticed my Ki flowing with each strike of the hammer. It flowed through the steel and up the tongs and back into me in short spurts. As this continued to happen, the steel became easier to work, and I tried pouring more Ki into the work. Finally, after I quenched and tempered the blade and affixed the handle, the prompt showed up” I finished with a shrug.
“Now that is interesting, it’s almost like what Ella can do with her Artisan class ability, but she can choose different upgrades to what she crafts,” Hope said with a thoughtful expression on her face.
“What’s up with that? The Path of Mana have Classes? And the Faith path, they have something called DF and FR? What are they? How does it all work?” I was very curious about the different paths of power. It was a long way home, and I needed to know as much as I possibly could. People can be major assholes, and if they have power like this at their fingertips, I don’t expect to get through without a confrontation or two.
Same decided to field this set of questions “apparently, those that chose the Path of mana got to choose between four basic classes. Theirs is the most game-like out of all the systems, as I figure it. The basic classes are Mage, Rogue, Warrior, and Artisan. Mages get a big boost to their mana pool and regen and get to pick two types of magic. Rogues get one type of magic and a stealth-like ability that lets them fade from notice. Warriors get one magic and an ability to boost their defense at the expense of mana for a short while, and artisans can spend mana to make crafting easier and purchase upgrades like increased durability, defense, and the like.”
Hope took over as Sam paused for a sip of his beer “they say that their Class will upgrade once they reach level ten based on their skills or some such. They also get three stat points per level to spend on what they want. So near as we can tell, at least stat-wise, two of their levels equals one Meridian opened for us. My best guess since it’s hard to draw easy parallels. Once we finish body cultivation, we should be equal to a level sixteen to twenty Mana user.”
