Universe's End

Chapter 198: The Eighth Summit

Tier eight. If the gulf between tier six and tier seven had felt long, then the decades of tier eight put it to shame. It had been a long time coming, and with plenty of experiences to account for during his time in tier seven, Rory fully expected the list of available skills to be quite extensive.

What he hadn't expected was-

One hundred fifty-two? God above that is a lot of stuff.

One hundred and fifty-two options. An impressive number, but his excitement quickly faded as he began to skim through every listed possibility.

These are just rebrands of things I can already do!

Elemental manipulations from lightning to earth, fire, and even blood, and several varieties of each as well, it was something that Rory found his non-corporeal eyes rolling over.

Well…. That's actually disappointing.

There were also plenty of crafting skills listed, but again, they felt pointless given that most were just flavor text upgrades of his own crafting skills. He already had metallurgy, why would he need 'Free Range Metallurgy?'

The only variety of skills not offered was any form of combat skills, as usual.

Not that I'm surprised.

Spending several minutes longer investigating, Rory finally sighed. Seated at the familiar metal table floating within a black void, Rory shook his head.

"Change of plans, let's start with attributes, a whole lot less thinking and options with attributes."

Switching his interface over, Rory found his eyebrows creeping up.

"Orrrr not."

In the past, attributes were always depicted with a slider and a bell-curve graph indicating their overall placement. The slider was still there, but the bell curve was gone. Instead, it was what looked like a blank box.

Curious, Rory messed with a slider, watching the new box. The instant he fully slid it over, the letter S appeared. Sliding it halfway, the S changed to a C.

Ohhhh. I think I get it.

Just to be sure, Rory began messing with the slider, moving it around at roughly ten percent intervals before nodding to himself.

Looks like Eon got tired of the bell curve stuff. Can't blame 'em.

Instead of a bell curve, it had changed to a simple letter grade to indicate how many attributes had been put forward. Less than ten percent was an F grade. Ten to nineteen percent was an E. Twenty to thirty-nine came in as, shockingly, a D. Forty to fifty-nine, C, sixty to seventy-nine, B, eighty to ninety-nine, A, and finally, at a maxed-out bar, or anything higher than a hundred percent if borrowing from bonus attributes gained from growth, an S grade.

Very game-y. Which I suppose is the point.

Having made sense of the minor alterations to how attributes were presented, Rory focused on the important stuff: determining his attribute distribution.

"Well, I know one attribute I won't be touching this tier, and that's growth."

Tier eight was likely to be crucial, given that he and his fellow founders would be clashing. Now was not the time for sandbagging for the future. In tier seven, Zoey, a defensive fighter, had been nearly too much for him to keep up with. Sure, that was while her attributes were inverted, but that didn't change much, if anything.

"So, no growth, got it. Also, probably want to cash in on my growth stockpiles from tier seven."

That was a prize that had been building for some time now. In tier six, his attribute distribution had been split fifteen, fifteen, fifteen among strength, durability, and flexibility. With the benefit of having invested in growth in the earlier tiers as well, he'd still had seventy percent attribute density to distribute, which had gone toward cognition and growth.

Tier seven, he'd dumped everything he'd gained from growth back into growth.

Which meant that now, in tier eight, Rory had roughly 50% more attributes to use.

Which I definitely need.

Unlike most people, Rory needed every attribute. Strength, Durability, and Flexibility for his physical capabilities, he wouldn't always have Zoey to hide behind after all. Cognition was crucial for specific crafts, such as gem crafting, as well as for basic precision and brainstorming. Then there was pneuma. He'd managed to get away with minimal pneuma investment until now in thanks to his efficiency and practice with freeform magic. Still, he would need to deepen his well for the future, not just for fighting, but for how useful it was to be able to utilize magic while making stuff, without requiring an extensive bound circle set up that had been pre-filled for who knew how long in advance.

So, with a 150% attribute density, Rory made his decision.

Fifty percent to cognition, still my bread and butter. Then, thirty-four percent to pneuma. Finally, twenty-two percent to my three physical attributes.

If Rory had to give himself an archetype, he was probably closest to something like an artificer who had a subclass in spellsword. Rory could easily imagine how, for most, it was a rather messy 'build'. The sheer attribute demand requiring so much growth investment would also slow down ascensions considerably, so if you weren't constantly working as if you didn't have any other hobbies, you'd stall out within your first two or three ascensions. Hell, he'd seen how there were crafters in Ehkorrus who spent years stuck in a tier that had taken him months if not weeks back in the day.

But Rory was someone whose enjoyment came from his work, and thus, he was able to keep pace with the extended time required for a tier-up because of his growth investment.

Let's see: I spent over six decades in tier seven, and accounting for the lack of growth investment in tier eight, I'm thinking… A long time. At least two centuries, maybe three.

That was a bit of a strange thought. A few hundred years. That would be generations on Earth. That was the difference between Benjamin Franklin's birth and the very first moon landing.

And here he was already thinking about tier eight as just another chapter in his life.

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Man, talk about how things change.

Letting himself steep in the significance of reality for several more seconds, Rory finally shook his head.

"Alright, enough gushy stuff. Back to the real problem at hand: God damn skills."

Having charted his attributes for tier eight, Rory had a better sense of what would be appropriate for his skill selection.

"Well, first order of business, any elemental or similar style skill can get gone."

Relying on a skill for elemental manipulation felt like a crutch. Earth Soul was different, as he hadn't gained the skill through an ascension. Anyway, the difference between something like Earth Touch, a basic elemental manipulation in line with many of the listings, and Earth Soul was night and day, like the difference between a handgun and a railgun.

"Next up, basic crafting skill upgrades, goodbye."

His list shrinking more, Rory nodded to himself.

Far more manageable.

With just those two 'filters' applied, the list had shrunk to a sixth of its original size. Of the remaining list, most were still some form of manipulation-type skill. Still, rather than basic elemental skills, many were more esoteric in nature, similar to his use of lattice-concept in his magic.

Interesting and novel, but ultimately still not what he was looking for. A manipulation skill was like a cheat code for manipulating a concept in magic, or in the 'real' world, but it wasn't the same thing as having an affinity for it. Even Earth Soul, as god damn useful as it was, didn't grant him the sort of reflexive understanding or ability to utilize something like his blood or lattice affinity did; he couldn't combine earth element magic on the fly with other concepts or elements as he did with his affinities.

Shrinking the list even further, Rory eventually found himself torn between three skills, each something he was exceptionally interested in.

Roots of the Ancestral Tree

Even the grandest of trees must start from a seedling and its roots. You have proven time and time again to be those roots from which many still young saplings have been nurtured. With time, some of those young saplings may grow into trees that scrape the heavens themselves. For the significance of being the roots responsible for nurturing those same trees, your own ancestral tree may grow faster, benefiting your growth to a small degree based on the accomplishments of your creations.

"If I'm understanding the overly flavored text…. Things I helped nurture or create or something along those lines, I'll gain a small amount of ascension energy from their successes. That's… seems insane."

Apostolos. Eia. Jinn. Tsarina. Even Ehkorrus itself might qualify as things he'd 'nurtured.' It would propel him along faster, and the more stuff he helped 'nurture', the more it would stack.

Maybe. I think. Unless it's based only on whatever is the most 'successful.'

And that was one of two major drawbacks. The first was that he didn't fully understand precisely what it did or how it did it.

The second, and in Rory's opinion, bigger drawback was that for a passive skill such as Roots of the Ancestral Tree to be as strong as it suggested, it implied that there wasn't anything else to it. He wouldn't learn faster, wouldn't pick up skills faster, couldn't use it to advance his creations, nada. In a sense, it was likely empty calories. The significance of one's actions is what built upon itself, stacking and growing and leading you through your ascensions. If Rory found himself using Roots of the Ancestral Tree as a crutch or anything more than a basic supplement, it might potentially 'water down' his success in the future.

And really, when you think about it, isn't ANY new skill technically a boost to your ascension? A new combat skill helps you fight stronger enemies; new crafting skills let you undertake more complicated projects, etc.

With that in mind, Rory looked at the next skill. In truth, it was the skill Rory found himself most drawn to, but that was partially the inner child and just how damn cool it sounded.

Elemental Eucharist

From thy blood, all shapes of magic have been formed. From thy blood, creations have abounded. And from thy blood, shall a conduit be formed. Transforms your very blood into cruor, becoming greater than the sum of its parts. Cruor has the same general attributes as blood, but can house elemental and even conflicting concepts with minimal loss of efficiency. Furthermore, grants greater overall stability for use in alchemical purposes.

While Roots of the Ancestral Tree promised expedited ascensions, Elemental Eucharist would quite literally evolve his blood into something more. Again, the exact details were somewhat unknown. Still, the reality of improving his physical body, and an element of that body he used so heavily, had to have uses just about everywhere.

But there was one final option, and it was a doozy.

Coordinates of Space-Time

You have stepped ahead of all others in understanding a subject far advanced from what should be possible for your place. Severing open the connections between space, understanding the bounds of its constraints, and even manipulating it to fold upon itself. Such knowledge is a reward unto itself, yet some knowledge deserves recognition beyond its base benefits.

Skill Integration: Eyes of the Architect, Seams Unseen

Affinity Reward: Coordinate

Much like Roots of the Ancestral Tree, Coordinates of Space-Time didn't seem to award any direct 'bonus' in the form of a skill or change to himself, outside of Seams Unseen being wrapped into Eyes of the Architect.

Which, to be honest, only makes sense.

No, what Rory really was concentrating on was the last part.

"Affinity Reward. That's a pretty fucking big deal."

Elemental Eucharist would allow him to bridge the gap between concepts and elements he didn't have an affinity for, which, by process of simple math, was most, but gaining an Affinity was huge.

"But what exactly is a coordinate affinity?"

From what Rory knew of most people with an affinity, it was generally something pretty predictable; the elemental affinities of earth, air, fire, and liquid were the most common, with more advanced elements cropping up as well, such as Apostolos with his primary affinity for sunlight and 'minor' affinity for starlight, as sunlight was starlight in a sense. There were more esoteric affinities, such as blood, that existed in a weird space between an element and a concept. Still, there were also purely esoteric concepts, such as his lattice affinity or his built-in foundational affinity, that did not like to be forced.

Just looking at the name 'coordinate,' suggested to Rory that it was more of an esoteric or conceptual affinity.

For the third time, the problem was that there was quite a bit of unknown involved with the offered 'skill,' yet Rory couldn't deny that he'd just spent two years, from his perspective at least, trapped within his own Mind Palace, trying to comprehend spatial concepts better.

And now here he was being offered an affinity for something that sounded like it was pretty damn close to what he needed. And an affinity, unlike a simple manipulation skill, offered benefits such as innate understanding and easier comprehension; it wasn't a crutch so much as a rocket booster.

Weighing his options, with a sigh, Rory threw out Roots of the Ancestral Tree. It was a sort of skill that most people would probably die for; getting stuck in the early tiers was a significant problem for most.

But then, it wouldn't benefit most people to begin with, for the very same reasons they get stuck in the early tiers: Never creating or doing anything of true worth.

Perhaps his phrasing wasn't the gentlest, but it didn't take away the truth at the core of the thought.

Which left him deciding between Elemental Eucharist and Coordinates of Space-Time. Rory really wanted to select Elemental Eucharist, if only just for how cool having 'evolved' blood sounded.

But.

But the fact that he even felt the need to hold back on the impulse told him everything he needed to know.

The details of what a Coordinate affinity did or was, at best, vague, but it was still an entire offered affinity.

And there was almost no beating that, not to someone like Rory who switched between combat and creation at the drop of a dime.

Selecting the 'skill,' Rory blinked his eyes moments later. The instant he'd mentally selected the skill, he was back in the present, legs crossed as he sat on the ground of his 'lab,' Roxy fast asleep upstairs in her bedroom floor.

"And there we go," Rory whispered to himself. "At long last, decades and decades later, it's finally been done."

With a smile, Rory dusted himself off and stood up.

"Tier eight achieved."