Titan: A LitRPG Adventure (UnderVerse Book 4) by Jez Cajiao (free ebooks for android .TXT) 📕

EXTREME:

Sure, efficiency is great, but you know what’s even better? POWER! Choosing the path of the Extreme will increase the cost of using this Ability by 50% but will also unlock the ability to infuse greater amounts of your mana into your body at a time. Beware! A physical body is not designed to accept high amounts of mana for a sustained period. Investing extreme amounts may result in… unexpected… changes. Your debuff will increase from -10 to -20 to all stats until complete healing has been carried out.

As this ability has now reached level ten, your mana channels have now fully adjusted to your new body, forming tighter bonds, and you no longer leak mana like an excited puppy!

Congratulations! Your mana regeneration has been repaired to full and now restores at a rate of 3.8ppm.

“Hell yes!” I muttered to myself, and as Oracle came to sit next to me, I had the strange feeling of ‘mirroring’ as she accessed the same data, reading it over and letting out a relieved sigh.

“At last; it’s been forever!” she said, letting out a deep breath and leaning against me.

“Believe me, I know! I keep stopping myself from using our mana in case you need it; it’ll be good to be able to use it again more often,” I agreed quietly.

“Bah, you just want me to feel guilty because we both know I’m better at spells than you are,” she snorted, and I could feel the amusement and gentle fun she poked at me. I reached up and wrapped my arm around her shoulders, drawing her in tight as I read the options over again.

“So, what do you think?” I asked her. “Efficiency or Power?”

“Hmmm…” She read through the details again, even though I knew she had them imprinted on her memory by now. “Efficiency would mean we could go for longer, and Power would mean we’d be able to do a lot more, but for a shorter time…”

“Yes, thank you for the basic description we can both see,” I said sarcastically, prodding her in the side with a finger and making her giggle.

“I mean, which do you think is more important?” she asked. “A single blast of seriously large power, then a more painful debuff, or the steady ability you’ve been using for a while now? It’s seen you through the worst fights you’ve had, so to make it cost less and have less of an adverse effect over all…”

“Yeah, it seems good, I’ll admit…” I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “I’m more concerned about the future, to be honest. The paths you choose gradually grow more and more definite, right? Like they’re refining your abilities?” I clarified, and she nodded.

“So, if we choose Power, then the next evolution, at twenty will be more likely to be a choice of Power, like making the infusion go up in strength, but gradually becoming more and more unstable. On the other hand, if we go with efficiency, level it up through a few more evolutions, and put a load of points into our mana regeneration, we could probably end up being able to live in Mana-Overdrive eventually,” I pointed out.

“Yes….” she said, drawing the word out. “But… you never know what the evolution will be, and what if you really need to the Power one in the next fight?”

“What if I really need the extra time in the ‘zone’?” I countered.

“Well, that’s why I’m glad I don’t have to make these decisions.” She grinned mischievously at me and reached to kiss the end of my nose before standing up and walking away. “Good luck!” she called back over her shoulder, and I growled to myself as she went, going back to considering my options.

A few minutes later, a clatter and a massive shape knocked me out of my reverie, as Grizz hunkered down next to me and leaned in close.

“Hey, boss, are you okay?” he asked quietly, and I dismissed the screens, blinking at him. He grinned, scratching his beard, and went on in a hushed tone. “Look, I know from what you’ve said, you’ve not been dealing with things like evolutions and your stats for long, which is just weird as hell to me, but anyway, if that’s true, it means that you never learned the easy ways of dealing with some things that we do.”

“We?” I asked, and he smiled.

“Everyone else, I mean,” he clarified. “We all live with this day in and day out. If this is truly new to you, it must seem weird.”

“It is, literally, but in my… realm, we had… diversions that included this kinda thing. We can talk about that another time,” I said quickly, seeing him light up and obviously ready to go down the rabbit hole. “What did you want to tell me, then?” I pulled him back to the reason for his interruption, and he smiled, shifting his armored bulk slightly.

“Okay, boss, look, if I’m out of line here just say, but…”

“Go on…” I said, nodding.

“Some ways of dealing with things have become kinda ingrained in our society after millennia of using the stats system, like the allocation system. Some people, hell, most people, are never really able to do much of it in their lives, you know? They don’t fight monsters, so they don’t tend to get many quests in their lives, and they don’t level up much. Others, like the Legion, well, we do it a lot, and we tend to climb quickly.”

“Right,” I said, gesturing for him to go on.

“So, it’s like the armor. You remember when we all helped to armor you up for your first Arena fight, right? That’s part of our traditions, that more experienced Legionnaires help the less experienced, and when it comes to stats and bonuses, well, we do that too,” he explained, shrugging. “Each maniple of the Legion has its Primus. Like ours, in ‘Second’ is Augustus, but he doesn’t just kick our