After a few minutes, Jen said, “The system awarded us experience points for killing the bandits, but the amount of experience points per level goes up exponentially. Also, did you notice the change in the mana regen and the two mana channels?

“I saw that, mine dropped to 1 mana regenerated per hour, but I only have one mana channel. Do you think the mana channels have anything to do with the drop in the mana regen?”

“I pulled up the original system message, and this is just a guess, but on Earth the system said it was supplying all our mana needs, but here in the Decks these mana channels are having to absorb the mana directly from the world around us, and it also feels much more diluted, possibly making it a slower process. I’m also wondering why I have more mana channels than you and if there is a way to get more. What are your thoughts?” Jen asked.

Sam replied, “I don’t have a better explanation, and it’s anyone’s guess if we can get more mana channels. What do you think about the ability points? What stat should we put our points in, or should we save them to use later?”

Jen frowned, “There are good arguments for both options. I think we need to do everything to stay alive, and getting killed with unused ability points would be stupid. I have two more ability points in mana regen than you, but that only equates to an additional 0.3 mana per hour. The mana regen rate may increase or decrease if we find an area that has more or less ambient mana.”

“How would we know if an area has more or less mana?” asked Sam.

“It might feel different, or maybe when we check our stats, we will see a different rate of mana regen. Just guessing here really. Either way, we can’t ignore the mana regen stat for long, but for now, our mana pool is the lowest of our stats, and I think we should put all 8 ability points into our mana pools. Most emergencies don’t last very long, and we can save our mana up to use in those situations.

Sam lost focus as he pulled up his stat sheet to add the ability points to his mana pool for a total of 15 and said, “Oh, I meant to ask, is there a pattern to the exponential growth of experience points per level?”

Jen finished adding her ability points to her mana pool for a total of 17 and replied “I couldn’t determine a specific exponential growth pattern… yet, but it could just be a random growth number determined by these gods. I remember from a statistics seminar in college, that numbers with unexplainable growth rates were said to have a ‘Litrpg Effect”.