Jose sat quietly for the rest of the night, not daring to use any skill lest he draw the horde back to him. He’d been able to get little sleep as each time he began dozing off, several of the Tainted would walk near enough to hear their unnerving laughter.

  At some point, exhaustion had finally won out, and he’d slept through the rest of the night. Still, upon awakening, his body was sore and battered. He’d been going over the fight all night, thinking of what could have made a difference in the last battle.

  Sitting up, he commanded his status page to appear and studied it.

  [Health: 280/305 Ether: 56/56

  Level: 8

  Soul: Ancient

  Race: Sapient

  Genus: None

  Species: None

  Strength: 16

  Constitution: 13

  Endurance: 16

  Agility: 22

  Dexterity: 15

  Awareness: 17

  Wisdom: 14

  Capacity: 24

  Free Points: 12

  Skills: Strike, Orb, Volt-Gen, Crafting (Beginner), Bolt]

  He wanted to try getting more information about each stat before placing his remaining points. But before that, he’d noticed that the Tainted had quieted down. He quickly pulsed Volt-Gen, healing any remaining injuries. This being the first time he used the skill while out of combat, he’d finally gotten a good look at its effects.

  The skill pulsed white lightning, starting at his chest and radiating out. The lightning ran the length of his body depositing small sparks on anything it healed. ‘Good thing I didn’t use this last night,’ he thought, ‘Those Tainted bastards would have seen it and torn me to pieces,’ he shook his head at the thought and moved on to checking each stat. He mentally poked each one, receiving additional information about them in turn.

  [Strength: Increases muscular density adding explosive power to physical attacks.

  Constitution: Toughens musculature and bones allowing one to withstand more physical damage. (Adds 5 to health per point.)

  Endurance: Reduces physical fatigue allowing one to exert more energy for longer periods. (Adds 5 to health per point.)

  Agility: Increases speed and cognizant function accordingly allowing for faster movement and reflexes.

  Dexterity: Makes muscles and joints more limber allowing for finer, and more precise motor movement.

  Awareness: Strengthens spatial perception allowing one to be more cognizant of their surroundings.

  Wisdom: Allows for higher brain processing power. (Adds 2 to energy per point.)

  Capacity: Affects how much energy one can use, have, and regenerate. (Adds 2 to energy per point.)]

  ‘Hm, I’m sure there is more to each that isn’t mentioned, but I’ll have to figure those things out myself as I progress.’ Jose thought.

  He had some decisions to make. After the first fight with the Armored Rats he’d been simply trying to keep his stats even to some extent. His agility and capacity had taken the lead, but not by much.

  Thinking back to his days playing video games he figured that people would naturally begin trying to specialize in specific stats to fit a certain build. For instance, brawlers would likely put the bulk of points into strength, or sorcerers would likely split it between wisdom and capacity.

  That all made sense in a game world where one had infinite lives to perfect that build or be assured of a team to always shore up their weaknesses. But in real life, such a strategy wasn’t optimal, or even viable, not unless one was always in a group to cover the weaknesses.

  Right now, he wasn’t in a group or team, and considering his demeanor and proclivities, he likely would never be. At least, not for any meaningful amount of time. It seemed his current strategy was the correct one for him after all. It may make him weaker than anyone who might be more specialized, but adaptability was what humans were best at, and making his build adaptable to any situation had kept him alive so far.

  Considering his current situation, he realized he was more than strong enough to kill any Tainted with one hit. What he lacked was the constitution to withstand more damage himself, the endurance to fight longer, and the capacity to regenerate his ether faster. Dividing his points, he brought constitution and endurance to twenty each and put his last three points into strength, dexterity, and capacity, respectively.

  The next thing to consider was his skills. Clearly, they were much more versatile than the simple descriptions suggested. For one, he could combine them to create unique effects, and he’d noticed during the fight that he’d been misusing his orbs. The fact that the orbs stayed dormant till they were needed and could follow him had eluded him. But now that he thought about it, it would be easy to prepare several and simply bring them along already primed for combat at a moment's notice.

  Jose very slowly opened the door to the closet he was in, just a crack so he could get a look out into the hall. He didn’t feel the presence of the Tainted in his current surroundings, but it didn’t hurt to be prudent. Having spent the better part of the night fighting and the rest in fitful sleep, he was now exhausted and starving.

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  It was hard to tell exactly what time of day it was from inside the building, there were no windows in the halls, only the stairwells and rooms. But he’d always been good at intuiting the approximate time of day, so he was fairly certain it was mid-morning.

  There was no sign of monsters about, so he slowly and methodically made his way out into the hall and began checking doors. With his current strength he felt it would be easy to break a door down, but that would leave him with an open room easily accessible by the Tainted. He’d much prefer to find one that had been left open. Halfway down the hall he found one and made his way in to scavenge some food and get some real rest.

  ***

  Jose wasn’t in any rush considering that he’d decided to live an adventurous life in this new world. And if fighting a horde of Tainted wasn’t considered an adventure, he didn’t know what was. After securing the door and eating, he’d taken the time to rest properly, afterall, he was surrounded by monsters and would most assuredly have to fight his way out.

  Now that he’d gotten some proper rest and filled his stomach, his thoughts were much clearer, allowing him to better consider how his skills worked. He knew that Strike and Orb worked with the same basic principals, that is, he could activate them, and they would stay primed till such a time when he struck something, or considered something within range an enemy.

  He also knew that combining Strike and Bolt produced a large area of attack effect. Still, he had questions that needed answering. He produced an Orb and attempted to move it around with his will. It took a bit of concentration to feel the hum of power within and connect to that, but eventually, he was able to move it around freely. Freely, but still with some level of difficulty.

  Secondly, he wanted to know if he could control the output of ether to each skill and if a higher output would result in stronger damage. Judging from the earlier experience, he figured that finding the answer to either question would require him to be more in tune with his ether.

  Jose sat cross-legged on the floor in the back bedroom, he’d attempted meditating before with varying degrees of success and knew it would be the best way to find and connect with his ether. He closed his eyes, relaxed his body, and took deep, slow breaths, clearing his mind. After several minutes, he was in tune enough with his body to delve into finding his ether.

  Feeling around in his body, he found several nodes of power. It appeared there were shallow ones at every major joint: kneck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, knees, and ankles. There were also two dense nodes, one at the very center of his torso, right at the solar plexus, and one in the center of his brain, if he remembered his anatomy correctly, it was at the penial gland. Interconnecting it all was a network that followed the same path as his main arteries, though he could feel that it was different.

  Jose could intuit that the penial gland node, also known as the third or mind’s eye, was more of a generator, while the solar plexus was the engine. Also, he felt that the mind’s eye and solar plexus nodes were currently the only active points. That was a mystery he aimed to solve, and fix if need be, but that was for another day. Today, he simply needed to become more familiar and in tune with his ether.

  Entering a deeper state of meditation, he became aware of several energies in the atmosphere around him, five to be exact. Each one felt different; one felt vibrant and energetic, another was bubbly and inquisitive, confident and overbearing, mysterious and elusive, and finally, one felt homely and inviting.

  However, he noticed the energy that felt homely and inviting was circling his head in a vortex pattern, like stars around a galaxy. He followed the vortex into his head, in the darkness behind his eyes, a shape appeared as he neared his first node of power. It was a tetragonal dipyramid prism, it floated in the darkness, rotating rapidly drawing in the energies that entered his body. Gray particles shot into it from the darkness around him, once inside, becoming red, white, and black lightning and bouncing around frenziedly against the prism walls.

  The lightning braided together and flowed down two different paths, bypassing the neck node and colliding in the center of his solar plexus. In the solar plexus it became a plasma ball rotating slowly as red and white lightning would periodically shoot out and run along its surface like solar flares on the sun. He instinctively realized that this was his nucleus of power and named it such, then decided to name the first node his dynamo.

  This was his ether, that’s why the feeling it evoked in him felt so homely and inviting. He felt it flowing within himself now; it was electrifying and empowering, as if he was plugged into a power grid.

  He could see the system as it was active now, the particles entering his body, the prism as it churned and whipped them into lightning, the lightning as it flowed down into his nucleus empowering him.

  He bathed in it for a time, familiarizing himself with his ether's process and flow. He activated Strike and watched; red lighting shot out of the nucleus, following a similar path as his main arteries, twirling and writhing over them. It spread to the dormant nodes on his hands and legs, empowering and bringing them to life. There, the power stayed, primed and ready to be deployed.

  He took hold of the nucleus and began trying to push more ether out of it but felt a resistance. He tried to take hold of the dynamo to spin it faster to draw more power in but also felt a resistance.

  The resistances felt similar, but not the same. The second attempt was akin to pushing against the tide, while the first felt more like a barrier needed to be removed. Intuition told him the first attempt was the right way to go, he simply needed to push past whatever barrier was in place.

  Diving in, he studied every single aspect of the dynamo and then the nucleus, it was there that he found the barrier. There were vortices leading out from the nucleus that worked like constrictors, opening to feed ether to his network. So, instead of squeezing out the ether, he realized that he merely needed to open these vortices and let the ether flow.

  It was easier said than done. There were eight vortices, a pair facing down, up, forward, and back. Each pair led to a different part of the body. Two led to the legs, two to the arms, one to the head, and three to the internal organs. He did not need to open all of them, but after some time observing his skills work, he knew he had his work cut out for him.

  His Strike skill required two pairs to be opened, the pair facing his chest and the pair facing his legs. For the Orb skill, only the one facing his brain needed to be opened. The vortices worked like diodes, allowing the ether to flow in one direction only, away from the nucleus.

  Concentrating on the rotational pattern, he pushed with his will, attempting to open one vortex. It took several minutes, or hours - he wasn’t exactly aware of time while under his deep meditation - before he was even able to move the vortex slightly. Even then, it was like pushing a car, alone, and up a hill.

  For an undetermined amount of time he sat, flexing the muscles of his vortices. Eventually, it became as easy as opening and closing his eyes. After finally mastering the ability to flex the vortex muscles, he practiced until it was second nature to do so. Finally, sometime later, he could practice no more and opened his eyes.

  By this time, he was entirely spent. Jose opened his eyes to notice that the room around him was hot like a sauna, and steam was rolling off him while his body felt lighter and stronger.

  Looking down, he saw the physical manifestation of his hard work. He had been steadily losing his belly fat since becoming galvanized, and now he looked more like he did when he was in his early thirties. He wasn’t quite rippling with muscle, but his body was compact and lean like a sprinter’s.

  His stats hadn’t changed but the lethargy that he’d felt for so long was gone. He could feel it now, his body had caught up with his ether level, allowing him to access his body's full potential.