Chapter XI

The System comes in many wonderous and horrifying variants.

Most Systems are bloodthirsty things, that only want to produce death and destruction. But there are Systems that prefer peaceful paths, or at least allow them.

In this chapter I will speak a bit about these peaceful paths.

Peaceful Systems are rare.

It is, however, somewhat common, that there are paths available that are peaceful. Some of them even have the requirement of you being peaceful, pacifist for your entire life.

Those System are split into multiple categories, in my opinion.

Warning, those categories are very subjective, very broad, and even more problematic than usual in their consistency.

The first type of System, which is generally peaceful and has pacifist options are Systems based around farming.

You gain your experience through farming.

You get better at farming, giving either you or your produce boni.

For example, a bonus to be capable of harvesting more per hour, or process more per hour would be personal bonus.

But there is often the possibility for you taking a bonus that makes your produce taste better, increases the potency of your produce as alchemical or medical ingredients and so on.

In the end, it often makes sense to take options from both parts, but, rarely, a user of that type of System specializes.

But if they do, quite commonly, the result can be spectacular. A single human with late medieval farming equipment at best, working alone, producing as much in a single season to feed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

Which is insane to behold.

Especially considering that there should not be the logistics in place for that kind of insane action.

And even if you solve the logistics issue, which, thanks to the System, is often done, a farmer like that being at least something semi common, should create a golden age for science and exploration, because less people, far less people need to farm to feed the population.

But that is not what happens. Hell, all those other, less efficient and less insane farms can still exist for some obscure reason.

Without copious amounts of mind control, that would simply not be the case. It is as simple as that.

But let us ignore that and look at the other extreme.

Food, which is so good that it should be addicting, but hey, mind control. At least this time a sensible form of it.

In most variants, the mind control is employed in a way to suggest to the person eating the affected food, that it is honestly amazing, while the food does not contain a lot more flavor, or even different flavor. There might be other things different, and those can be actually present, like additional nutrients.

Although present can be a very relative term.

Back to what I was talking about.

The mind control additionally makes it non addictive, and, depending on a variety of factors might, rarely, even suggest that this should only be eaten for special occasions. The reasons for that are, admittedly, not entirely clear to me.

But there are other things those farmers can do.

I spoke about more potent reagents.

Considering that alchemy and similar things tend to be completely controlled by the System, this has a fairly minor effect.

Or, to be more precise, it has a major visible effect, and only a minor real effect, because why should the System expend the energy necessary if it is not used anyways?

A sensible action taken by a System! Will the wonders ever cease?

Even healing is done a lot through the System, but there the things might actually have an effect, for a number of complicated reasons.

The first, and most obvious being that there are areas where the System might be far less active, like mundane healing. So having the stuff already there and simply doing a little bit of tweaking on the fly when it affects might make sense from a workload, or energy perspective.

The second reason for that is that it is actually doable to put at least portions of the real, necessary active ingredients. While the System might need to act to prevent poisoning, it still offers a real change, and many Systems prefer for the change to be at least based in reality, for whatever reason.

After the fact changes are completely doable, but are expensive and time consuming.

Or at least I think that this is so. I might be completely wrong though.

But enough about farmers.

The next type of non combat System user are the well named pacifists.

Pacifists, which is almost always a class, if it is indeed a viable route to power, are users that get a experience penalty if they ever attack.

It can go to some pretty hefty extremes.

Those extremes can be that if they hurt anyone, even while defending or accidentally, they get set back to level one and can never regain the class.

Pacifist classes do, however, have a number of advantages in general, which might make them a very good option for some people.

They tend to be insanely good general crafters and healers, if necessary.

They have a tendency to be theoretically very powerful, and depending on the exact specifics, have a tendency to be very difficult to kill.

Which is good, considering that they cannot fight back if necessary, which, if you did not know, is generally a bad thing.

Not being aggressive, ok, I get that. But not fighting back, not defending yourself if you can? Problematic.

Although fleeing is of course the first route of fighting back you should choose.

Always better to let a professional do the fighting for you.

Trust me on this. If you have no idea what you are doing, you are more likely to injure yourself and innocent bystanders than the attacker, while at the same time making it more likely for him to use deadly force. Still, in an emergency, when you have no other choice, you should be able to mat least hit back. Or struggle.

Pacifists of the System variety cannot do that.

They would loose all their advantages very quickly if they tried.

I am not a fan of that, to be honest.

But a pacifist can become an insanely effective and well rounded crafter, who can do everything a specialist crafter can do. And he can do that for multiple types of crafting.

It is difficult, insanely so, to keep on that path, and sometimes it is even impossible, but if you want to be the best crafter there is, it often is the only way.

And the results speak for themselves, transforming you into a jack of all trades and a master of them all as well.

Which is just insane to even consider.

But it does happen, although the only reason it does is, certainly, a lot of assistance from the respective System.

Or even the System doing everything for you.

Which is at least nice, considering what one needs to sacrifice to use those skills.

Admittedly, pacifist classes work far, far better when you have some method of coming back from the dead and cannot be intercepted doing so.

Bonus points if you can use that ability to escape from imprisonment.

Now, if System affected universes were civilized places, it would not be that big of a deal,. But sadly they have a tendency to be bandit infested places, where monsters roam the streets, and every single guy you meet on the street wants to kill you.

Even if you should be immune against such an attack, because of your level, horrible measurement system that is, because no one bothers to remember who was the idiot killing the evil lord of evilness yesterday. Or to use that Systems variant of observe or identify.

If that Skill was used more, most would have far fewer issues.

Sadly, that Skill is not used more. In fact, many System affected universes seem to have a tradition that using the Skill is a sign of you not being a true man or some stupidity like that.

I am not sure, I am simply attempting to figure out why the hell they are not using that really handy skill.

Most of the time it functions to inform you of the level of the one you identify. And if it does not, that does not, I repeat, does not mean that the guy is unimportant, but, in general that he has something hiding his status from you.

Now, there are a few options of how that can happen. The first, and most obvious, as well as, by far, the most common option is for the one you are trying to identify to be incredibly powerful, so powerful in fact that your identify simply does not work on him.

Or rather the System says that it should not work on him, because it is a purely System based Skill, with all information coming from the System and being provided through the System.

I sometimes think the System is mind controlling its users away from using the Skill or doing anything sensible with the gained information.

But I do not get the motive. The System does not need to provide the Skill, by any means. So why would it provide the Skill, expend the energy, however little it needs, to run the skill, just so that it then expends more energy to prevent anyone from using it?

No one can understand.

It is especially jarring in System affected universes were most beings, outside of the truly spectacular users of the System get at least semi generic class names, like bandit, if that is indeed the way they are providing for themselves.

So how can those bandits go to town, get rid of their ill gotten gains, when the freaking identify Skill exists?

Now, there often are ways to modify what is shown to the one identifies.

But unless it is an all or nothing deal, with which I mean, all real information, or no information at all, that is shared, it generally is not easy to find, nor at all common, so what gives?

Well, I am now sitting down with a nice hot cup of tea with bee vomit dissolved in it, hoping that it calms me down from this mess.