“I have no idea what you just did, but now was not the time to do it.” Meira admonished Bjorn.

  “I kind of figured that out on my own thank you very much.” Bjorn said, his annoyance bleeding into his words. “I kind of figured out that resetting my level to level 1 and now my base stats are at 9 again was going to be a bad thing to do. But guess what, it happened. I had no idea what was going to happen when I activated my synergy ‘latent potential.’ But this isn’t what I thought would happen.”

  Meira glared down at Bjorn as she towered over him on her knees. “That isn’t helping.” She snapped back at Bjorn.

  “Yeah? Well neither is you admonishing me for something I didn’t know would happen. My interface hasn’t exactly been helpful with what would happen if I ever met the requirements for latent potential. I didn’t mean for this to happen, but it did happen. So can you please stop talking down to me?”

  Meira’s glare lessened somewhat and it turned into more of a frown. Her face took on a more neutral expression and she took in a deep breath, before she let out a heavy sigh. “You are right. It was a gut reaction, I am sorry. We still need to figure this out though.”

  “No, what we need to do is finish burying our friends and then get out of here. Can you help me out of my armor? I think my stats aren’t high enough to use my equipment.” In short order Meira helped Bjorn out of his cuirass and chainmail that he took from Blackrock Bay. He took off his bracers and greaves as well. All in all he shed roughly 25 lbs. but it felt more like 100. In confusion he looked down at his chainmail and used W.A.I.L.A. on it.

  Reaching down he picked up the chainmail shirt that he had been effortlessly wearing less than 5 minutes ago. Even though it said that the chainmail shirt weighed 12 lbs. It instead felt like it weighed at least 40 lbs. It wasn’t extremely hard to lift by itself, but it was heavy enough that he had to struggle a little to lift it.

  “Well that explains it.” Bjorn said. Making Meira look up at him with a puzzled look. “I don’t meet the strength requirement to wear this armor anymore. It’s weird I have never come across this before.”

  “It’s probably because you already met the requirements by the time you came across this item so it didn’t show you any requirements.” Meira said, holding her hand out for Bjorn to pull her to her feet.

  Bjorn reached out, grasping her hand and pulling her to her foot. “Yeah, but I find it odd that I haven’t come across any requirements before, I didn’t even know that was a possibility.”

  “Oh it is. But we need to still finish burying our friends and we need to get out of here. We are now in a worse state to protect ourselves now that you are as weak as a lamb again.”

  At first Bjorn was going to protest her choice of words, calling him ‘as weak as a lamb.’ But ultimately he knew that she was right, and that he couldn’t dispute that. Instead Bjorn just nodded and he and her got back to work. It was slow going now that his strength attribute has been reset to 9. What once didn’t tire him out now made him exhausted. Throughout the process of burying Rickie and then Alaric he had to stop several times as his stamina started to bottom out once again.

  It was frustrating, his frail state reminding him of what he used to be like when he first came to the Eld. It had been a long time since he had felt as helpless as he did today. It was an unsettling feeling, one that he thought he would never experience again. He never figured he would lose the power he had accumulated. The only saving grace was the fact that it wasn’t a true reset. All of his skill levels were still there and fully intact. As well as his profession and all of his purchases for that with his talent points.

  That was something that did make Bjorn excited though. He was level 1 with a profession. Maybe he would get talent points for each of his levels. Another thing that did get saved was his talent points from the three levels he gained from killing the Mauler. So he had another 30 points left to spend on his alchemy profession. Either way he didn’t regret the reset from that standpoint, just every other way he wished he hadn’t.

  One thing that did make Bjorn curious was his new growth points. He didn’t know what they were or what they could do, but he was curious to find out. Along with the points there was a whole new option in his HUD. And it was right where the button for his profession was, now it just said ‘upgrades.’ and when he clicked on it it gave him two options, the first one was his profession, the second one was a new one, it was a rich gold color, this one was unlabeled.

  He didn’t know for sure but he figured that had something to do with his growth points. He had already made a single blunder today, that wasn’t going to happen again. So instead of letting the curiosity get the better of him he decided to instead put it aside and just finish burying his dead friends. It took them several hours to finish.

  It was well into the afternoon when they finished burying all three of their friends. They started to get situated for travel. The first thing that Bjorn did was he sorted through his bag of holding and started to remove items that he really didn’t need. It was a wondrous item that reduced the weight of any item placed inside by 90%, but still, he had collected a surprising amount of shit, and his bag was quite heavy.

  A Lot of body parts that he had collected of the spiders that he was going to dig through to try and find anything useful for alchemy left the mouth of the bag and got set on the ground. There were also a surprisingly high number of herbs that he had collected that he decided to leave behind. He ultimately decided it was better to keep some of the more rare herbs than carry some of the less useful metal items. So some of the junk pieces of armor that he had been collecting got left behind. In the end his bag probably weighed close to 55 lbs. Which was more manageable, but still heavy for his strength.

  Meira on the other hand bound the portable pocket to her and she began to pull tons and tons of useless stuff out and leave it on the ground. Alaric had no issues with the bag as it was. Out of all of his attributes strength had been his highest stat so it was no worry for him if the portable pocket was ungodly heavy. Meira on the other hand was nowhere near as strong as Alaric had been. Between the two of them Meira now had the higher strength stat.

  She took out tents, extra camping gear, extra sets of armor, extra weapons, extra cooking pots, metal bars, and surprisingly a toy rocking horse. The pile of crap that came out of the portable pocket was almost surprising. Bjorn knew he pilfered a lot of shit from the military encampment but he didn’t realize that Alaric was a hoarder.

  “Much better.” She said as she belted it onto her waist. “Alright, we really need to be off from here. There isn’t that much day left, and we need to get going. We will be slow because of my leg. You would have been able to take up a lot of the slack, but with your current state that isn’t likely to happen.”

  Bjorn nodded and together they set off heading up the mountain heading the same way they had been traveling before they got attacked by the mauler. Meira was right, as they made their way forward they were very slow going. She was slower than Bjorn was, but not by much. His new much more feeble state made their travel take entirely way too long.

  They had been following along the mountain trying to split two peaks. It looked like there was a most likely flattish piece of ground they could travel through and make it to the other side of the two mountains. It took them around an hour to make it to where they couldn’t see the graves of their friends anymore. It was roughly a mile before they lost sight of it.

  They were right. The mountains sloped down towards each other and over the years and years that the mountains existed dust, dirt, and sediment settled where the two mountains connected making a nice easy slope up to the pass and then through and down. It was nearing dark when they crested the position between the two peaks.

  Meira was slower because of her leg, but the one holding up the progress was actually Bjorn. His reduced stats meant that he was losing stamina entirely way too fast and the regeneration took too long. So they had to stop periodically and let him rest to regain some stamina before they could progress.

  “I think we should get over this hump and start making our way down tonight. I don’t like this wind, it will make it super cold tonight. On top of that I think we should avoid making a fire tonight. You are in no position to fight, and neither am I. We might be able to kill a simi-weak monster, but we can’t hold our own. We should avoid making the fire to not draw any attention.” Meira said.

  “I agree. It doesn’t look to be much further for a place to stop.” He was right, it was only an hour before they found a nice outcove that they could crawl into to sleep for the night. They shared a meal of cold bread and water for the night. Bjorn pulled out a blanket and wrapped both him and Meira up in it and they sat down propped up against the side of the rock wall next to them.

  In the morning Bjorn was the one who woke up before Meira once again. He sat there just drinking in how thankful he was that Meira was one of the ones who lived through the fight. As he sat there hugging her he finally decided it was time to find out what the growth points were good for.

  Diving into the menus he quickly navigated to the new menu that appeared. As it turned out he was right, he figured that the 18 points would be used in whatever that new menu was. When he opened the new tab in his HUD his new menu looked exactly like a simple drop down menu from the early 2000’s. It was just a series of grey boxes stacked on top of each other. Just to test out he mentally clicked on one of the boxes labeled perks.

  The grey box grew a slightly brighter shade of grey and under the menu labeled “perks” there were 3 new slightly smaller boxes appeared, these a shade of white. Each one had a single line of text followed by a single number.

  Increased growth+ 5.

  Skilling Savant 5.

  W.A.I.L.A.+ 5.

  “Well that isn’t vague and unhelpful.” Bjorn thought to himself. Much as how it has worked in the past he focused on each option, willing it to give him more information. And unsurprisingly the universe provided.

  Increased growth+: This purchase will increase all of your xp gained even further. The xp gained will increase from +25% to +50%. This purchase will replace your Increased growth perk.

  Skilling Savant: This purchase will increase all of your skill gains even further. This will provide you with a 300% increase to the rate at which your skill levels will increase. This purchase will replace your Skilling prodigy perk. Sadly the two do not stack.

  W.A.I.L.A.+: This will further increase the capabilities of your W.A.I.L.A. perk. The ways that this will increase your perk’s abilities are numerous and would be too hard to describe in a prompt such as this. Rest assured that it will be well worth the purchase.

  Understanding dawned on Bjorn. He didn’t know exactly how it worked but somehow his Latent Potential perk reset him to level one. Eating almost all of his progress up until this point to give him Growth points. These Growth points could be spent to upgrade who he is. Thus making his “Starting point.” Much further ahead, it allowed him to achieve the same power he had before much easier.

  Pulling up his character sheet again he double checked how many Growth points he had. He had 18. He better spend them wisely. Once he understood what was happening he began diving into his menus to find out what would be best for him to spend his points on. Many of them were grayed out, with their lettering also blurred so he couldn’t see what the option was. But on the root menus there were over 100 different tabs that he could use to upgrade himself.

  The one that made him the most interested was the tab labeled “Attributes.”

  More attributes: 2: Gain 1 extra free stat point per level to distribute.

  Increased Strength: 1: Gain 1 strength point per level to distribute.

  …

  There was one for each and every different attribute he had.

  Maintain stats: 1: Allows you to retain any natural attribute gains that you make whenever you activate your “Latent potential” synergy. Note: As a human the maximum amount of natural attribute gains is capped at the attribute values being 20. (This means for you and your weak disadvantage you are able to gain at max 11 in each attribute before you are capped.)

  Base attributes: 1: Increases your base attributes by 1.

  Attribute efficacy: 2: Increases how much each individual attribute affects your status by 10%

  Ho-ly- shit. Bjorn had to actively try not to drool on top of Meira’s head at the power of the synergy. If there was a way to increase his longevity he could easily become one of the most powerful people in the Eld. With that thought he began to dig through the different menus trying to find something like that. Sure enough he found it.

  Decreased aging: 1: Decreases the rate at which you age by 20%.

  Almost on impulse he purchased Decreased aging. Although it wasn’t truly on impulse, he decided to purchase it mainly because of Meira. It always bothered him that with her being an elf she would live significantly longer than Bjorn would. Based on what his friends told him, the average life expectancy of a human was around 80 years old. With elves living to be 150 years old.

  Currently Meira was only a few years older than him. She was actually 27 Eld years old. Doing some mental math that would be the same as almost 38 years old back on earth. Even though he had lived almost 2 and a half years in the Eld by this point he still found himself reverting back to earth time. The years being 512 days instead of 365 days long still threw Bjorn for a loop. Wait a second, that would make Bjorn almost 30 years old if he was back on earth.

  When he purchased the upgrade slowing down the rate at which he ages he did more mental math, this one was easy though. Instead of living to around 80, now he would live to around 100. If he made it that long. Still closer to Meira’s life expectancy.

  Decreased aging II: 5: Further decreases the rate at which you age by another 20% bringing the rate down by 40% total.

  Although he only had 17 points left to spend to upgrade himself he was still happy with the results. Upon further thought he would gladly spend that single point again. He didn’t want to lose Meira, as a secondary thought, no one wants to die. If you talked to anyone who was dying of old age, they would all say they wished they had more time.

  He began looking further through his menus reading all of the various descriptions of each upgrade he could do to himself. There were a few that caught his eye.

  Increased health recovery: 1: Increases the rate at which you regain health from 1% hp per day to 2% hp per day.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Base regeneration: 4: Gives you a slow regenerative force. This force will allow you to slowly regenerate any part of your body that has been cut off, removed, or lost. The body part in question will be fully regenerated exactly 1 year after it has been removed from your body.

  Daily xp: 1: Increases the xp you gain per day. Increasing it from 1 to 2.

  Physical resistance: 2: Gives you 10% resistance to all physical damage.

  Natural armor: 2: Increases your body’s ability to resist damage. As a human the base natural resistance your body has is +0 armor. Purchasing this will give you a natural armor rating of 5.

  Just a few of the more noteworthy upgrades that he could spend his points on.

  He was so engrossed in all of the potential that he finally had because of his “Latent potential” synergy that he didn’t really realize that Meira had finally woken up. She didn’t ask him about why he was acting the way he was, as his behavior mirrored closely to that of yesterday. When he was distracted but for another reason.

  The pair of them ate another cold, basic meal before they started making their way down the mountain. The way forward was going to be difficult, but they could make it together. Ahead of them there was another mountain peak, they were on almost a pass across the mountains. They didn’t have to really climb down to the base of the mountain to cross. Instead the pass dipped down in between the two mountains, giving basic shelter from the wind while one the peak, all while still having them thousands of feet above sea level.

  As they walked Bjorn got distracted once again and began looking through his menus once again. He had to figure out how he was going to spend his points, he didn’t want to waste them. As he looked through his eyes always strayed back to the first tab he looked upon.

  There were few things that had let him gain any kind of advantage since he came to the Eld. Arguably the only things that really gave him any kind of advantage were his abilities. Namely, increased growth and skilling prodigy. The first one was pretty self explanatory as to why it helped. Skilling prodigy on the other hand felt a little nebulous at first.

  Making his way through the Eld he hadn’t fully appreciated how good of an ability that truly was. For almost everyone the first few levels in a skill came easily. The growth was always fast and tangible. This was true right up until skill level 10. Generally any skill growth after 10 was considerably slower than it was at lower levels. The difference though was a matter of hours to a matter of days. This still held true after 25. That skill growth changed from a matter of day to a matter of months to gain a single level.

  For Bjorn, in the right circumstances, it could still be a matter of days for any real skill growth after level 25. This held true for both alchemy and archery.

  So any way he looked at it a further increase to skill growth rate would be a god send. After thinking about it he decided he was going to spend 10 points. To buy the upgrades to both of his perks.

  Prodigious growth: 20: This purchase will increase all of your xp gained even further. The xp gained will increase from +50% to +100%. This purchase will replace your increased growth+ perk.

  Skilling genius: 25: This purchase will increase all of our skill gains even further. This will provide you with a 500% increase to the rate at which your skill levels will increase. This purchase will replace your Skilling Savant perk.

  He expected the cost for the next level of purchases to increase, he didn’t expect it to increase by so much. He briefly entertained the possibility of upgrading his W.A.I.L.A. perk as well, he pushed that thought aside for the moment. He had no doubt that upgrading his identifying ability would be good and helpful, but currently it was a little too costly for him. As with his first three purchases he was left with 7 of the first initial 18 points that he had.

  So far there were two different purchases that he was going to for sure buy. The first one was “More attributes.” The second one was “Maintain stats.” His reasoning for the first purchase was that it would mostly negate the only real disadvantage that he had on his status screen. For two and a half years he had been plagued by the “Weak” disadvantage. For two points he could remove that downside. Making it so he would gain the human’s 4 free attribute points to allocate per level.

  As for the second one, it seemed obvious to him. He had no idea how many Growth points he would get, but one thing was sure. He had gained many different stat growths from his own efforts over the years, and it sucked for all of that effort to go away. The description of “Maintain stats” made it sound like he would be able to activate Latent potential again, and if he did so he didn’t want all of his attributes to be reset to 9 once again.

  With a thought he spent the 3 points. He ultimately thought that the purchase was well worth it.

  More attributes II: 4: Gain 1 extra free stat point per level to distribute.

  When he purchased Maintain Stats the entire box faded away from his vision. On a hunch he scrolled to the bottom of the list and sure enough there was another new tab labeled “Completed.” When he opened that new tab he found Maintain stats.

  Happy with his purchases so far he kept looking, trying to find what he wanted to spend his last 4 points on. He was so engrossed in what he was doing he hadn’t even noticed that it was near mid-day, he and Meira took a break. He probably should have said something to Meira, but he was distracted. So far they hadn’t spoken to each other all day.

  What caught his eye next was a category named “Skill levels.” There was a change in this new category. There was the usual list of upgrades available for purchase, the difference came when he saw a new menu that was almost the same as they were at the base level, only this one was slightly smaller and was the same as the boxes he saw originally, it was at the top of the available for purchase upgrades. When he opened up the new menu there was a list of all of his current skills and he could purchase single skill levels for growth points. They ranged in price, but there was a common theme. The higher skill level he had the more expensive each new skill level cost.

  There was a warning at the top of the menu for skill levels.

  Warning! Keep in mind that your purchase of these skill levels do not actually impart any of the relevant ability to make use of the skill levels. Purchasing any of these upgrades will not actually make you any better with the skill associated with it. It will just give you the numeric advantage of gaining a higher skill level in your skill.

  Other than skill levels he could purchase there were only two other options for purchase.

  Skill growth per level: 10: This is a benefit that will be added each time you level. You will gain 25% skill growth to allocate to any skill that you wish per level. Note: This skill gain will stay around after you activate “Latent potential.”

  Skill sharing: 3: Anyone who is under your teachings will gain 100% increased speed to the growth of their own skills.

  As much as he would have liked to purchase the skill growth per level, it was just a little too rich for his blood. He was sure that the growth would be a great boon in the long run. Even if he had the points to spend he still wouldn’t have bought it at his current state. There was no doubt in his mind that 25% skill growth per level was not currently an equivalent purchase as increasing his two abilities.

  Instead he moved up and kept searching for where he would spend his last 4 points. He actually found 3 different upgrades under different tabs in quick succession that all interested him. The first one was under the magic tab. The second one was under the alchemy tab. The 3rd and last one was actually under the misc. Tab.

  Increased access to schools of basic magic: 1: Increases the cap of elemental schools of magic you can learn by 1.

  Increased potion toxin resistance: 1: This will increase your resistance to the toxins found in potions. This will modify your body so it can better process the toxins. This will make it so you can drink 1 additional health, mana, and stamina potion. (1 of each type.) within a 24 hour period before your body has reached its limits and has a chance to permanently decrease your stats.

  Basic map: 1: Gives you access to a basic map that is integrated into your HUD. This map can be toggled to give you a minimap in the corner of your vision.

  After some thought he decided to spend 3 points to get all three of the upgrades. He had a fire spell book that he could read to give him access to that school of magic right away, thought he would have to think if he would really want to take that as his 5th basic element school of magic.

  It always rankled him ever so slightly that he could only drink at most 1 health, stamina, or mana potion per day without consequences. It especially hit him hard with how he normally always had multiple on hand. He was a damn alchemist after all, it sucked that he wasn’t able to take full use of the potions that he brewed.

  As for the basic map, up until this point there was one thing that he was missing from his video game days. One thing that he really wished he had, and that was a mini-map. So far during his time in the Eld he had gained levels, he had gained stats, he had gained magic, he had even gained an inventory. The only thing he wished for was a map.

  Increased access to schools of basic magic II: 5: Increases the cap of elemental schools of magic you can learn by 1.

  Increased potion toxin resistance II: 4: Increases the amount of potions you can drink within a 24 hour period without any setbacks from 2 to 3.

  Basic map II: 5: Gives you increased functionality to your basic map.

  As soon as he purchased the basic map upgrade something smacked him in the head. On impulse he looked up not seeing anything. He felt something brush alongside his back before he heard a soft poof as the item hit the ground. He looked down and he saw a piece of parchment paper sitting on the ground by his feet.

  “What is that?” Meira asked.

  “I think it’s a map.” Bjorn said as he reached down retrieving the item. When his hand came in contact with the map a box of information appeared in front of his vision much as it did when he used W.A.I.L.A. on something.

  “Huh.” He said as he read the description.

  “Where did it come from?” Meira asked, looking up in the sky confused. She grabbed it from Bjorn’s hands and she unfurled it. Laying on the surface of the map was all gray in a 5 mile radius of where they stood and in the center of the map stood two little dots each labeled by “Bjorn” and “Meira” Respectively. The only part that wasn't gray was the way that he and Meira had just walked, that area was filled in with an aerial view of where they had walked. It was filled in with extreme detail.

  When she saw both her and Bjorn's name on the map she freaked out. Grabbing a hold of Bjorn’s shoulder she made as if to pull him. “Come on, someone is watching us. We can’t stay here.” Her tone was hushed and fraught with worry.

  Bjorn for his part stood firm against Meira’s attempt to pull him. She wasn’t pulling with her full strength, which was greater than Bjorn’s in his current state. This made it so that he was able to resist her attempts to pull him to the side.

  “Calm down. This came from me. I am not sure how exactly it works, but I will tell you all about it in a bit. Let me finish what I was doing and I will fill you in, I promise.”

  She stopped trying to pull Bjorn behind a tree and her eyes narrowed. “Fine, this explanation better be worth it though. Your words have made me curious as to how you managed to make a map fall from the sky.”

  He reached his hand out basically asking for the map but she shook her head. “Nu-uh. This stays with me until you give me an explanation.”

  Bjorn sighed, “Fine. I am almost done, I will explain it to you when I am finished.”

  He began to dig through his options once again. Now that he only had a single point left for upgrades his options became limited. For the next 15 minutes he only really spent time reading what upgrades were available for 1 point. Something managed to catch his eye.

  Shared power: 500: This purchase will allow you to link yourself and another person together. Through this link you are able to share skills, abilities, and even upgrades that you have with this person. By default you are only able to share 1 thing with 1 person. This number increases with subsequent purchases of this upgrade or with the strength of the bond between you and the shared partner.

  It wasn’t even close to being feasible, but as soon as he read the description of the upgrade he knew what he would use it for. He would buy it in conjunction with basic regeneration to allow Meira to regrow her now missing leg. It was a pipedream, but he still longed for that ability. It has only been two days since she lost her leg and he already could tell that the loss was taking a toll on her.

  There weren’t many good options left for him for his 1 point. At first he wanted to buy the base attributes upgrade but he decided against it. He wasn’t sure but he kind of figured that if he had purchased the base attributes now he would only be able to get 10 attributes per stat naturally before he became capped. Something deep down told him that would be the case.

  He was down to two different purchases that he thought would be worth it and would give him the most benefit right away. The first option being Increased health recovery. To be honest that desire to purchase was more out of curiosity. He was curious if it would stack with his already insane health regeneration. Whether it would make it so that his health regeneration would go from 16% per day to 32% per day, or if it would just add the 1% on top of the 16% he already held.

  What made him decide against that purchase ultimately was Meira. She was a life mage, and she needed something to practice on so she could continue to gain skill levels in life magic. He figured that he would probably get hurt quite a bit in the future and he wanted to give her as many opportunities to get better through him.

  The next option wasn’t all that interesting to him either. That one was the increased xp per day. Currently he gained 1.5 xp per day, after his new ability was taken in account. If he purchased it that would take him to a whopping 3 xp per day. He would ultimately gain 3x the base experience each day, but that was a drop in the bucket. To get to level 2 he needed 1000 xp. Meaning he would naturally gain level 2 in around 3/4th of a year instead of the almost 2 years more people needed to gain level 2.

  Big whoopty do. Making it so that he would suck less just that little bit faster. That wasn’t that big of a deal to him. He kind of figured that he would gain his power back more along the lines of how he gained it the first time. By killing stuff.

  Some part of him was actually repulsed by the idea of killing things to regain his power, he had no idea where that feeling came from but for the moment he squashed the feeling. Getting back to the matter at hand.

  When he first came to the Eld he had killed a rabbit that was level 4, it hadn’t been pretty for him. He was a weak willed person when he first made it to the Eld. Luckily he got past that quickly. What was important though was he gained 48 base xp 60 because of his perk. Now though if he killed the same rabbit he would gain 72 xp. It wasn’t major, but it would make it easier to regain what he had lost. Killing that one rabbit would net him essentially 24 days worth of experience. If he purchased the xp per day.

  Thinking about killing the rabbit the feeling of repulsion resurfaced, this time stronger. He had no idea as to why the feeling returned but he once again squashed the feeling down. It took more effort but he was able to brush it aside.

  He had finally decided to let it go, what he was going to do was purchase one of the attributes per level. He was undecided as to what one would be the best. His gut reaction was strength, as having more strength was never a bad thing. With Alaric and Rickie dying he would need to fill a front line role with him and Meira, she couldn’t handle being close during a fight. Afterall he saw what happened to her the last time she got close in a fight, she lost a leg.

  He thought long and hard about it though and he decided that the unequivocally best choice for the moment was actually constitution. It didn’t matter if he was strong, if he couldn’t survive a hit, then what was the point of having strength if he died in 1 hit. Besides, if he purchased the constitution upgrade then he would gain 5 points per level, putting him on par with Meira being an elf. Though the argument could be made that he would be better than Meira as she only had 3 points free to distribute per level.

  Bjorn was about to make the final purchase when something weird happened. His HUD glitched briefly as everything briefly blurred. When it cleared it appeared that he actually purchased the xp per day instead of the constitution. He was confused as to why that happened, and as to what happened. When he looked at the daily xp purchase its description had changed.

  daily xp II: 1: Increases the xp you gain per day. Increasing it from 10 to 20

  “What the?” Bjorn thought to himself as he thought about what just happened. At first it just increased his xp from 1 to 2. Now it was saying that he is currently going to be gaining 10 xp per day. Cutting down how long he needed to gain a level to just over 3 months. He still thought that it was absolute shit, but how did that happen?

  A voice he had only heard a few times before, but was unforgettable, sounded in his head. “You’re welcome, I too think that 1 xp for 1 point is shit. This should be better.” It was fucking Charon again, the asshole who gave him this shitty choice of abilities and disadvantages. He was about to cuss Charon out for what he did to Bjorn both for making it so he had to endure slavery at the hands of the gnolls and for changing his choice just now.

  He knew that technically Charon wasn’t responsible for Bjorn becoming a slave to the gnolls, but deep down Bjorn still blamed him for that event in his life. As to his new choice he was fully within his rights to be annoyed with Charon.

  Instead he thought about it. As he was looking at the menu splayed out in front of him, he knew that he never would have gained access to this kind of ability to grow stronger. Hell, he could have spent 8 points and he would have gained 8 stats per level with 3 points to allocate per level. That was massive. So far in all of his travels he had only come across 1 race that had more than 5 points per level, and it was heavily limited because of it. He was having momentary buyer's remorse but he felt like he made the right choice deep down.

  He knew that Charon had ultimately done him a favor, so instead of complaining he simply said. “Thank you.” Mentally to nothing in particular. Somehow he felt a feeling of smugness briefly before it was gone.

  The entire process took a little over half an hour for him to make his final purchases. The entire time Meira who was hopping along beside Bjorn was giving him odd looks. They were walking together with her arm slung around his neck. She used him in place of her other leg. Throughout the morning they traveled in silence, each wrapped up in their own thoughts. Or so Meira had thought. Instead she found out that Bjorn was doing weird shit once again and somehow summoning magical maps to fall on their heads.

  “Alright I am finished.” Bjorn said as they hobbled along.

  “About time. So now are you going to explain what happened earlier to me?” Her voice had an edge to it that Bjorn didn’t notice right away.

  “I will, But I think we should stop for the night tonight. I have a few things I want to do. We aren’t getting far anytime fast, and this wind that has been blowing through here all day has been cutting through my clothes. Let's pick out a camp and we can talk about it. It will be a lot to take in I am sure.”

  Meira gave him a long sidelong glimpse. “Alright, I trust you. Let’s hop over to that ledge there and see what we can find.” Meira pointed to a cliff that had formed along their path sometime earlier in the day.

  It didn’t take overly long to find something that would work for their needs. There was a small rock outcropping roughly 10 feet below where they were currently standing. It had a single path that lead down to it. The path was a little tricky to navigate with Bjorn being weak again and Meira only having access to 1 leg.

  The rocky outcropping was actually bigger once they made it down onto it than it had looked when they were above looking down. The rock above it was actually an overhang which gave them roughly a 15 by 15 by 8 area that they could lay down in and have a roof over their heads, just in case it rained tonight. The best part about it was that it was finally quiet. They had been traveling northward and a wind had been howling all day out of the west. With them being on the east side of the mountain they were completely out of the wind.

  They decided it was actually worth it to start a fire today. So Bjorn left his bag of holding behind and went and collected some wood for a fire. It was hard to find enough as the top of the pass was mostly devoid of trees, but he found just enough for a small fire. He made it back to where Meira sat and they built a fire together.

  “Alright.” Bjorn said once the fire was going and they were sitting opposite each other. “So throughout today I finally found out what my synergy Latent potential does. It apparently reverts me back to level 1 an…”