Congratulations! Through continued practice, you have learned the skill: Persuasion. You have learned how to convince with your words and actions. Efforts to change another's viewpoint to match your own will be slightly more effective.

Huh, Sevs thought. Another new skill. Now that he was past level seven the alerts didn’t have the tag warning of normal training restrictions bypassed anymore. That was about expected. He should have an easier time learning skills from now on, he hoped. Just to be sure he checked his stats and skill list.

ID

X77

Progress

Tutorial: Lvl 7

Titles

STR

-10%

DEX

-10%

INT

-10%

AGI

-10%

WIS

-10%

CHA

+60%

CON

-10%

Skills: Leadership 3, Physical Fitness 2, Persuasion 1

That wasn't bad progress. Sevs only had a couple skills at this point. Considering that Persuasion was a broad skill, it might not have any prerequisites. That would make this another root skill. The skills Sevs knew well were organized into trees. Several skills required no other skills to learn, and from there, that would unlock many others that were harder to learn and more specific. For example, he was hoping to get some sort of fighting proficiency soon. From that skill, he might get something like unarmed combat and eventually grappling. If he really worked hard, he might get a skill for a specific move, and that would be a very powerful move that could seem quite inhuman with its success rate and power.

The most Sevs had ever gotten in a run before was three specific spells, and he had been a monster of a character in that iteration. Battlefields were controlled from afar with his magic. That was considered quite successful; the vast majority never got any. There were even several people Sevs had met that hadn't even gotten a tier 3 skill.

Of course, that hadn't seemed to matter. After several years, many of them had ascended. Even though it was considered harder, many people decided to play a generalist rather than specialize in one or two stats. That usually leads to it being easier to be able to learn all the base skills but much harder to climb the skill tree. Sevs planned on getting the root skills for many charisma-based skills, then grinding them up one at a time, depending on his needs. He would also go with another skill tree and get as high as possible. He would need some sort of combat ability. In combat, general skills were much less useful in his experience than in other activities.

There were only a couple areas where Sevs stood out as a player. He did rather well learning intelligence-based skills. Even at his current modifier of 90%, he would probably pick up a few before too long. While more skills were always better, that wasn't the thing that really made Sevs stand out anymore. Sevs had long ago decided that intelligence skills were not enough. What Sevs had more than anyone was experience. Compared to the average player, he might have played through more than 10 times as much as them. It had been a long time since he had lost count of the number of play-throughs. It was too depressing to check his account information.

After considering the request to go to the gym while Sevs checked his status, Father agreed. They could go tomorrow and see what was happening. They would grab a schedule. Sevs pumped his fist, which made the waitress look over and smile along with Father.

They made it to work without much trouble. The morning went on, but Sevs was lifting with Markus after lunch. It was a productive session. Sevs hit a new personal best for his deadlift. However, Markus seemed to be moving a bit slowly today.

"What is going on? I've never seen you fail a lift with so little effort."

Markus gave Sevs an uncharacteristic small smile. Normally everything about Markus was large and loud, so that gesture stuck Sevs as something might really be wrong.

"I'm starting to think about a few of my choices." Markus started the lift again with a lot more energy, effectively cutting off the conversation. The strangeness continued. After they finished lifting, instead of heading over to the showers, Markus turned on the treadmill for the first time Sevs had ever seen him even touch the machine. "I'm going to get ten to fifteen minutes on this thing. Why don't you use the cable stack for some anti-rotation intermixed with farmer carries of the thirties."

"Sure, but now I am sure something is wrong. You must be sick. I have never seen you do cardio before." Sevs asked. Markus actually looked a little embarrassed but just shrugged. "Did Father really humble you that much last night?"

That seemed to surprise Markus enough to pull him a little out of his mood. "Haha, maybe. I think I was reminded that grappling takes more than just strength."

Markus started a quick walk, and Sevs went over to the cable stack. After they each finished, they hit the showers and got changed. The cardio seemed to help Markus feel better as he seemed more himself as they were starting to get to work. "Ya know, I think I need to get you a gift."

"Why?" Asked Sevs.

"Well, apparently since you started helping me out here, my productivity has increased enough that even my boss noticed. They are trying to promote me. I wouldn't normally expect that for a couple more years. Promotions are hard to come by at my level."

"I wouldn't think some extra bug fixes would have much of an impact."

"It's not so much the work we do. But I take care of a lot of my other work in the morning. To ensure no one gets on me for spending so much time working on bugs or features. I do all the designing, reviews, and my normal stuff. Not sure why, but maybe compacting it into a shorter time has made it more noticeable. Or maybe I am just getting more done now."

"With a promotion, does it mean you will have more of that work to do?"

"Yeah, kinda. I also get paid more, so..." Markus shrugged and gestured to the screen and Sevs. "Don't worry, it won't be enough that we will have to change this."

"Hey, on a completely separate note. Can you show me the website for Susan's Gym? I don't even know the name, and Father and I were looking for the schedule earlier today."