The meal was nice but Dinner focused on Jason and his question. Peter was suitably shocked at Jason’s status, being able to show the difference between his base stats and bonus stats. Of course things like equipment bonuses would be shown broken out but that would be easy enough to figure out by just taking the stuff off.

After that, though, things got down to brass tacks. Everyone went back and forth over earning stats and starring them. In the end it is Rachel who ends up with the most accepted idea. As she put it, “Levels get you stat points and experience gets you levels. What if earned stats come from experience more directly and there is a limit on how much extra experience you can gain after reaching a bottleneck?”

A reasonable enough guess and everyone else agrees that they likely aren’t going to think of anything better. Though Peter does have one extra quirk to add. “Beyond just increasing stats, practicing a stat does something on a more physical level. A magic user who hasn’t ever lifted anything heavier than a book takes a lot more effort to gain a point of strength. My guess is that even if a person can no longer gain more strength, working out will still tone their body. This should relate to how much experience is needed to increase a stat.”

Back in his room Jason sighs. Starring his stats should technically be possible for him at the moment. The problem is, it isn’t likely going to continue for too long. Right now it takes so much more effort to level and so he has the time. That effort however won’t be ramping up like it does for everyone else and so later on the levels will be flying by compared to others. Especially since he doesn’t seem to be gaining them that fast in the first place.

Which, as he thinks about it, is strange. Not that he is gaining stats so slowly, but that he gains them at all. The entire point of his cultivation technique is stripping out the extra fluff and taking in only the purest power. A side effect of this was his complete lack of stat points at level up. Jason had reasonably assumed he would make it up with earned stats and personal skill.

But if experience was still the source for earned points that throws a wrench into his understanding of how it should work. If that is how it works he shouldn’t be gaining stat points at all. Then he stops for a moment to consider how far behind he actually is from the expected curve. To start, everyone has ten points in the three basic stats and health. Until level nine, a person gets one stat point and some amount of whatever power type they chose.

Jason frowns, he doesn’t actually know how much Mana and Qi a person would be gaining. Beyond that he doesn’t even know how much those go up starting at level ten. Though as he thinks about it, the power increases mean less because everyone gets access to some kind of training technique to improve that on its own. With that in mind, he takes a moment to look up the increase and has to whistle.

From a single stat point you jump to seven. After that though the numbers seem to stabilize at the previous amount added to two and the number of breaks you’ve gone through. So 12, 18, 25, and so on. Of course after 25 anyone who hasn’t developed a core will do so and the number will fluctuate but that is the baseline.

Since Jason is currently at level 14 an average person would have gained 44 stat points from leveling. After a quick check Jason has the base stats of 28 strength, 42 toughness, and 39 agility. Taking away the original base ten and adding it together gets you 79. Almost double what the average player would have. Jason can’t believe the math and so goes over it a couple more times.

He had honestly believed that he was behind the curve when apparently he was just comparing himself to others in the wrong way. His base health is definitely below the average at only 106. Other people get a minimum of five a level, modified by toughness. This means an average melee fighter is going to hit 200 and a pure tank will be at over 250. Jason’s health is more inline with a back line magic user.

Jason shakes his head and goes back to the stats. To find out that not only has he been gaining stat points, but at double the rate others would, is inconceivable. Why is he gaining stat points at such a crazy rate? Especially since most of those points happened early on. No wonder why he has been crushing content.

But Jason can’t just leave it at that. He has decent stats but they’ve slowed down. Someone at level 19 will match the number of stat points he has now and have been able to place them where they want. If something doesn’t change, Jason will fall behind and that could cripple him at later stages.

With a shake of his head, Jason can only focus on something that has been with him since before he had met with Rosha. The source of this confusion has to be his cultivation technique. Something is off with Energetic Body Reinforcement. He dredges up what he can remember of when he formed the technique.

Then it hits him. He didn’t make the technique. This had completely slipped his mind until now. The technique was originally Penny’s, and she had requested he train it to the highest level he could. The whole filtering thing it does for him only developed afterwards when he had formed his core. Of course something would be off about the technique! How could he truly know what it does when he wasn’t even the one to make it.

Jason can’t change it out for another technique. That ship has long sailed, but he can definitely dive into what is going wrong with it.