I leave my little hut feeling something strange in the air. Wind blowing, still slow but faster than the very light movement from day one. Before, not even the finest dust particles were lifted from the ground, but as I squint my eyes against the light of the sun I can see them floating in the air. Nobody has passed through this alley in the last half an hour or so and that means this is the result of the faint wind. My perception field is handy that way. Even keeping it close by I can still perceive people up to 20 meters away instinctually.

After shrugging I start running to the institute. They are the ones dealing with all the information coming from my book lately. Getting there, I give the book to our scribe so he can copy it down, his movements far faster than I would credit anyone being capable of back on Earth. But the blurry sight of his hand and thousand things just as strange is just part of the scenery a couple of months after our integration.

Sitting on the ground I open my prompt to look at my skill list. As my eyes start to search for each of the skills, I stop and try to do something similar to what I heard others having success doing.

I try to reorganize it, and I start with something very simple. Show me skills organized by level.

Show skills by level.

SHOW…Skills... LEVEL

The screen changes instantly, like pressing a ‘sort by level’ icon on top of the list and it instantly reorganizes itself. Five skills stuck at level 99, and a couple more approaching this level.

Mana Manipulation

Lv. 99

Deep Meditation

Lv. 99

Running

Lv. 99

Runic Language

Lv. 99

Nature Manipulation

Lv. 99

Other people have reported the same cap and even Merlin is stuck there. Though I shouldn’t be complaining, my highest attribute, Wsdom, is some 20 points lower than these skills, but I doubted that is the limiting factor. There are plenty of others who have more than double in their highest stat, and no one has overcome this threshold. So far neither my book nor any other source even hinted at the reason.

I look at my 40 free stat points. They are just sitting there tantalizingly, calling to me, but I am still not sure what to do with them. I want to put every single one in wisdom and get it a little higher, but then I look at perception.

Should I keep my course or do I increase perception? Maybe even something else entirely? Spreading the attributes like my class and subclasses is always an option.

The branching path before me seems way more important than most of the choices I made up to this point. It feels as important as the choice of class and whatever I end up choosing, the best option will require me to believe in it. Even if I chose ‘correctly’, if I was always looking back with regret, it would do me no good.

Wisdom would make my magical attacks ever so slightly stronger, give me mental fortitude and allow for me to handle even more mana, outside of the increase in my regen and a plethora of minor benefits for my magic use. Willpower is naturally my strongest stat and there is a pull to allocate the stats there.

But Perception is no slouch and improving my perception field is very appealing. There is something… more there. For as useful as the mental stat are, choosing something that bridges the gap between the mental and the physical side excites me on a deep level.

Except the benefits aren’t tangible and maybe it would be better to improve this particular skill back on Earth in the years we will have before other people start invading our planet.

I can even go the pure power route and increase my intelligence and scramble to reach what is in Merlin’s reach. For each point of mana, his fireballs can do at least 3 times as much damage as mine and this gap will only increase as his percentual and linear bonuses stack for an almost exponential increase of his intelligence attribute. There may come a time where his Intelligence alone could be greater than the sum of all my combined attributes, and that single thought stops me in my tracks.

I don’t regret choosing the balanced approach. Focusing on a single attribute didn’t mesh well with me, but… I chose ‘One with the world’ for my main class for a reason, even if nobody else can understand why.

Pushing ahead following what I believe in will give me the most benefit I start putting all my points in Perception. Every single one of the 40 points and cracking my eyes open, I press the confirm button.

Done, there is no changing it now, and… I am happy with my choice.

I will never catch up with to the likes of Merlin on raw power and trying to keep up, even if I could for a time, would be folly. My path leads elsewhere, through different valleys and mountains, and trying to conform to what Merlin has done would be a disservice.

I take the plunge with no compunction ready to rely on my wits and varied toolset, along with the sheer amount of mana and mass my companion provides me with.

Name: Nash

Level:50

Titles:3

Class: One with the World

87.63 M/0 EXP

Strength

52

Soul

41

Constitution

51

Agility

51

Dexterity

56

Endurance

61

Perception

118

Intelligence

67

Willpower

81

Health

819/819

559

/day

Mana

1077/1077

97.95

/hour

Stamina

506/506

7.45

/min

Looking at my stat screen, I’m left a little disappointed. I knew what was waiting for me there, but I’m still disappointed at the very modest increase in everything but Perception. After my decision not to push on with Aether the fast increase in stat points has ground to a halt. I could have probably pushed a little while longer without suffering much from the adverse effect of forceful Aether usage, but it was best to cut these tings on the nub. Especially as I didn’t know what the eventual cost will be of overly relying on Aether.

But I have to find an alternative way to increase my stats. That is the only path to realistically get stronger. I will be stuck at level fifty until I took the next trial class, and even if I don’t mind wasting the chance and risk lowering the rarity of my class and the potential it has, I need to wait for the thirty-day countdown to tick down to zero.

Shaking my head my mind goes back to the path before me. I had a feeling the stat ‘cap’ that I will reach is still the same, but with the slow training without Aether or better technics, it will take a lot longer to reach it. Maybe even centuries and I want to shorten that by… a lot. And if this new method somehow kept the system’s interference at bay, all the better.

I am not too enthused about letting the system keep sending its Aether constructs into me every time I am about to increase my stats on my own.

My frown, however, doesn’t last long when I start noticing more in front of me. I blink a few times as my eyes go wonky. I close them for a minute and when I open them whatever change the system was making is done.

There is so much more information. With my peripheral vision, I can make out details that many people may have missed even if it was in front of their faces, at least before the system. Most people without locked stats have close to 20 in perception which is worlds beyond the normal state of affairs back on Earth.

I squint my eyes as I look at a spot in the wall. My vision zooms in and it’s almost as if I'm inches away from the wooden walls. Details that would have escaped me before the system unless I was with my nose right against the wall are now visible from meters away. The small indentations in the wood, the slight color variation between the fibers and even the individual splinters.

I sniff the air lightly and I can sense so much more. Wood is organic and if it was one of the buildings we had made in the last couple of months I could understand a subtle smell, but this is one of the original buildings of the village. It shouldn’t have this strong a smell.

I get a knife from the inventory and nick the wood in the wall. A blast of odor hit’s me as I inhale deeply, and I almost tumble backward.

That was… unexpected. If my normal senses experience changes like this, what improvements does my perception field hold? Though I need to be careful and get used to the stronger senses, almost fainting in the middle of battle is not a good idea.

At the door, someone peaking their head in interrupts me. She enters the institute while staring at me. I close the system prompt and stretch my whole body. I didn’t spend long sitting, but I had a feeling she wanted me to follow her, and I’m proved right in just a few moments.

“Nash, we ran out of seeds. Can you refill the barrel at Scout Central?” She says referring to the little watering hole for the 60 or 70 dedicated scouts in our village.

“Sure, you ran out already?”

“Yeah, and if you want to leave even more behind, they won't go to waste.”

“There aren’t that many of you. I left well over 200 thousand small seeds last time.” I say referring to the other scouts.

“Charlie liked the idea of increasing the revenue split from anything you find where we planted them and I think he will be talking with you about other villages.”

“He already did, I gave him a few barrels of the smallest seeds. I just thought it was an idle thought, not something he would be pushing hard.” I say looking at the clear sky, always blue with not a single cloud on the horizon.

“I don’t know, but we don’t mind. And it is less expensive for you in the short term.”

I shrug my shoulders. “To be honest, it doesn’t make much of a difference. Not when you are following your usual routes, though paying for people’s exclusive time to plant in less explored routes is expensive. Now tell me, do you have any news about the high level-zone?”

“Not much, the mob's levels are still increasing, though they seem to be stalling. Your black panther got to level 132 yesterday.”

“Tree levels in four days, that is not much of a halt,” I say, still unconvinced.

“We saw 2 of them increase by as much as 7 levels in 4 days, this is less than half of that.”

I nod my head before speaking. “But the average is a good deal lower than that extreme growth. Last I checked, for two weeks the average was about one level a day.”

“Don’t try and take this from us, we want to head into the high-level zone, and we will only be able to do it if we grow a lot stronger faster than the beasts. The area outside is fine enough, but there is nothing left to explore.”

“I wouldn't be so sure, didn’t we just discover a copper mine just a couple of miles away? It was right under our noses the whole time, who says we won’t find more surprises if we look hard enough?”

I smile as we come into view of the little shack converted into the scout's base. Entering it, I grow a small shroud with the roots and branches and leaves from the ground to hide what I’m doing from her. I fill the barrel already in place to the brim, along with growing a large container with intertwining branches big enough to fill it with another ten barrels worth of seeds.

My stock nearly empties and I will have to delay any excursions to blanket whole areas with seeds. But maybe I don’t even need to do it myself if they are volunteering, and I guess Charlie will be giving them a part of the proceeds proportional to how much ground they covered instead of them having to rely on luck to be the one planting near whatever I found a mine or other resource.

How naive was I thinking that if I kept growing them at a steady pace, I would have enough for time immemorial. There are barely any left behind in the inner world. I look back and realizing she just finishing up a persimmon, my stomach growls.

She moves over to the large container, stuffing the rest of it in her mouth, and begins to scoop the seeds into the planting staff. Thinking of going to get a few fruits for myself, I talk.

“I see you like this Persimmon facsimile.”

She swallows the rest before speaking.

“Hell yeah, if there is one thing you contributed to during our stay in the instance, it was this. It’s absolutely delicious.”

I smile at the sentiment I have begun hearing often as the fruits finally ripened and most of the village now had access to at least a few of them. She finishes filling the staff and so I pass along a message for her and the other scouts.

“If you are planning to blanket an area, focus more on setting up lines about 200 meters from each other, but don’t be afraid to go even more sparse.”

That way as my perception field expands, I will have access to a greater area.

“Shouldn’t we plant them closer together?” She asks.

“No need, soon enough, it won’t make a difference.”

“Ok.”

Watching her move out of the village while extending my perception field to the maximum range, about 52 meters, I walk to the back wall of the village where the persimmons are growing.

They needed a little mana to make them mature in weeks instead of months, but it is worth it.

As I relish the meal, my perception focuses on the nearest trees through the network.

I have seen Pando’s seed, nope…. I have seen Aspen absorbing plants into itself, and experimenting with them in past, but there is something tantalizing about it. Maybe I could improve on the method.

I extent the tendrils and start pumping mana to the trees a mile over at the back of the village. I skip the closest ones, as we will probably start cutting them down soon enough.

It takes me time to absorb the hundreds, thousands of kilograms of biomass that make the tree I chose. Each inch is a struggle, though it is a fight that relies mostly on my willpower and control. With a very thin stream of mana for a few minutes, I add a good 1500 kilograms of mass to Aspen’s network.

I could add about 30 trees every hour at this pace. More mass than I could reliably grow and would cost me just a couple of hundred mana points, but that takes too long.

Aspen doesn't weigh much when it comes to it. He has spread over thousands of miles, but it is mostly in thin lines except in the few spots I spent a lot of attention and mana growing and thickening the roots to make batteries or other runic formations.

This is an option in some cases, but after thinking for a few minutes, it doesn’t seem worth the time investment.

After wiping my chin with a cloth and sending it back into the inventory, I get up.

I failed to find something worth my time here, but if Aspen wants to do it, it will help him gain more biomass. He may even have more luck in coming up with a better method.

What I am about to explore are the changes that the 100 plus perception brought me.

No one else experienced a sharp change after crossing the 100 stat point threshold and that means I was missing a piece of the puzzle. Though I could always be blowing this out of proportion, maybe I just increased the stat a lot more than most people did at once and was shocked at the change.

Curious, I head off to play with the perception field and see the changes there. Regardless of the reason, I am bound to have made significant improvements there and gotten closer to being able to read the letters in the book.

Bookstore, just you wait, I took at least one step in the right direction, and soon I will be coming for you.