CHAPTER 145: GRINDING THE WEAK BASTARDS (3)

But that was because of prediction and because he was far from the actual fight. That allowed him to see better what was going on. Reidar knew he needed a better edge in those situations, and especially in all the others he didn’t end up in until now. F.L.A.I.R. would give him that edge, especially with his aim.

Besides, Lena was right, he had plenty of mana already. What he lacked was the ability to use it more efficiently.

"Alright," he said. "I’ll invest in F.L.A.I.R."

Lena turned to Jake. The kid leaned against a broken storefront, still catching his breath.

"What about you, Jake? Where are you putting your points?"

Jake straightened. "I, uh, I’ve been putting about forty percent into S.H.I.E.L.D., fifty into A.C.U.M.E.N., and ten into F.L.A.I.R."

Reidar understood the reasoning. Jake relied on his trait, Augmentation, which burned through mana fast. The kid boosted his speed to superhuman levels to survive, which drained him of the precious resource.

So he needed strength from S.H.I.E.L.D. to increase his minimum speed and survive, mana from A.C.U.M.E.N. to fuel his trait and pump up strength and speed even more, and a little F.L.A.I.R. to make him able to use that speed without crashing into a building.

It made sense from Jake’s perspective. But Reidar knew it was wrong.

The problem was that Jake’s trait worked best with skills, just like Reidar’s Skill Sharing trait did.

The kid’s build was a pure survival tactic. Reidar was sure that Augmentation excelled when coupled with skills.

His trait could amplify a skill’s effect, making it exponentially more powerful for the same mana cost.

With a decent damage or crowd-control ability to augment, Jake wouldn’t need to pour everything into speed at all because he could simply decimate everything with a single attack; he could hold his ground and hit harder than anyone his level had a right to.

His trait consumed mana, but the effects it generated were much more cost-efficient than simply pouring mana into the skill.

Unfortunately, Jake didn’t have access to Vendors. He couldn’t buy skills, so his survival points were just sitting there, waiting to be used.

He was stuck augmenting his base physical attributes instead of amplifying skills.

"Jake," Reidar said, "from now on, put everything into A.C.U.M.E.N."

The kid’s eyes widened. "Everything?"

"Everything." Reidar gestured at him. "Your trait is powerful, but you’re using it wrong, at least in my opnion. Right now you’re augmenting your speed and reflexes because that’s all you have. But think about what you did until now. I asked you to only use healing skills, but what if you had summoning skills?"

"Like you?"

"Like me."

Reidar didn’t give the kid those kinds of skills simply because they needed to not attract the monsters, but nothing said they could not do it in the future.

Jake’s brow furrowed as he thought about it.

"A simple skill could become devastating with your trait," Reidar continued. "A skill might grant you the ability to summon 10 skeletons, but with your trait, you might be able to summon 100 at the same cost."

Here, both Jake and Reidar would have to test. Jake’s trait used mana based on time and how much Jake augmented a skill, but if Jake pumped up a summoning skill, and the summoned creatures remained even if he stopped channeling mana into the trait, then Jake might be able to summon as many creatures as he wanted.

Reidar could do the same, but it was a far more tedious process.

He crossed his arms. "None of that matters if you run out of mana in ten seconds. Your trait’s potential is limited by your mana pool. So you need to maximize A.C.U.M.E.N. Once we get you access to a Vendor and you have skills of your own to work with, you’ll be able to choose how you will fight, but I think it would be better for you to turn into a mage."

Jake nodded. "Okay. I’ll do that."

"Good." Reidar pulled up his status again and allocated his three points. He watched his F.L.A.I.R. tick up from 6.5 to 9.5.

The world suddenly felt sharper. He caught details he hadn’t noticed before, like how shadows shifted in a broken window and the faint tremor in the ground from something moving in the distance. He even saw the way light pushed through the dust in far better clarity.

His thoughts sped up too. Not because he got smarter, but because something in his brain changed that wasn’t related to intelligence. He felt more in tune with his body and everything around him, as if moving became simpler.

Lena watched him with a smile. "Better?"

"Yeah." Reidar flexed his fingers. "You were right."

"I usually am."

Lena’s expression turned serious again. She glanced down the street. "So what’s the plan? We keep hunting like this?"

Reidar looked east, toward the theater. The map showed the routes Jake pointed to, and that his Vorathid Foragers went to check. The density of monsters between here and there was massive.

"We need to increase our levels, that’s for sure. But if we keep doing it as we are now," he said, "it’ll take too long. We’re killing small groups, sure, but we need to level up a lot more before we can face the Broodmother. At this rate, it’ll take days."

He had thought about this problem since they had started this entire ordeal. There were two obvious approaches.

"What do you have in mind?"

"First option," Reidar said, "we could lead as many monsters as possible to the theater. Summon the Bone Militia and Spectral Knights; let them engage in melee. We’d level up fast because we’d be killing everything in a concentrated area. They will probably fight each other too, so there will be fewer monsters to kill, and the broodmother might go out to fight and end up injured, which will be better for us..."

"But?" Lena asked.

"But the monsters would kill each other, as I said, and while this is good for the situation in itself, it also means we’d lose C.L.A.S.P. and Survival Points because we couldn’t claim every kill. It’s inefficient. There is also another problem. Nothing says the broodmother would go out to fight; she might escape, and then we would have to find her again."