Now, how can I exploit the system.

I mean I was getting close to have a self-sustaining loop of alchemical leveling and I wasn’t even level 2 yet. That already felt like an exploit. I assumed some sort of problem was going to get in the way to stop that, but until it did I was going to push it as far as I could.

The first step was drinking these potions. I waited till my aether ticked up one more naturally, which only took a minute since I was just under the time for it, and then I drank half the liquid in the bowl, a single large mouthful. It didn’t taste great, that was for sure. The berries certainly gave it a sweetness that helped it not be unbearable, but it was made of bark and ferns otherwise. Magic shimmer or not apparently.

No notification or status effect that I could find. So instead I watched my stats. After about two minutes my aether went up by 1, I waited till it had gone up by 4 to drink the second potion. The question was, did it stack? Would I end up with 12 total on the same regular schedule? (stacking duration) Would I go up by two next time? (stacking effects) Would I only get 10? (overriding each other).

It was a tense few minutes, but the answer appeared to unfortunately be overriding each other. I only got 10 aether total.

Ok that was a bust. On to the next exploit I had been considering. Well, more a strategic usage of my situation. But in games it was usually considered a form of game design exploit (that designers built against) to let higher level characters carry you. And that was my next plan.

I didn’t have [Taxoanatomy - Identify Animal], but those wolf bodies were still down there and my [Restoration Mixture] knowledge seemed to imply that if they were celestial resonant, under level 15 (the current cap for the skill), and not resonant in any other ways then I could use them to make a much stronger aether potion. The big if here being that if any of those things were wrong the resulting potion would be anywhere from very toxic at worst, to made of blood and bone and probably not great for me at best. I felt like that didn’t really matter since I would just get a notification telling me if it was successful, but maybe I was missing something.

There were two combinations of materials that passed the [Restoration Mixture] mixing check, one with the blood and bone, and one with just the bone. Another obvious axiom the knowledge did impart on me was that the more higher level materials that were used, the higher level the result. I probably could have guessed that one, but it was comforting to have the skill agree with me.

The blood would go bad ‘soon’, the [Restoration Mixture] knowledge not really expanding on it. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if that was me or the skill knowledge thinking ‘soon’. Was I just remembering something I saw on a crime show? Or was that some buried knowledge of the skill? At least the bones would last… probably.

It was here that I saw why the gathering skills were valuable. There was a skill for gathering animal tissues under [Ranching&Hunting - Harvest Animal] that would be invaluable in actually doing the deed. How did one even get blood out of a half-day dead corpse anyway?

(And it was here that I again wondered at the names of some of these things, a constant train of thought that was occupying me when ever I wasn’t planning or focusing on the task at hand.

For example, [Taxoanotomy] seemed to be describing a mix of both an understanding of the physical anatomy of animals and the taxonomy of their abilities and characteristics. [Ecobotonay] on the other hand seemed to be describing a mix of both an understanding of the abilities and characteristics of plants and the greater ecology they describe. Which are slightly different connotative meanings. However as far as I could tell they appeared to be nearly exact mirrors of each other, with nearly the same skills, but one for animals and the other plants.

Similarly [Ranching&Hunting] is a group of skills around the management and harvesting of animals, it seems to fit in with [Farming&Gathering] and [Mining] all of which are clearly resource management and gathering skills. But these, among others, used two words joined by an and instead of being mushed together. Why the difference? Why these names?

Of course the obvious train of thought I kept coming back to is that this is all in my mind, and that my mind is in English. Perhaps in a twist of Sapir–Whorf these names are simply what can be expressed in English of what might be singular conceptual thoughts. Thoughts of the system that must then be expanded back to my language that lacked concepts for thinking them. Hard to know anything for sure, but what usually broke me out of this thought, and on to more useful ones about understanding the system itself, was the abomination of a name that was the [Socioculturaleconomics] skill group, which had so many implications…)

More importantly there was the question of even going near those ruins again. Giant glass monsters, wolves with glowing eyes, and whatever that fun house of space was… nothing unnatural had happened around there since then. But I was still wary and I still kept the ruins under constant observation, I was pretty sure it was some sort of dungeon, or maybe an entrance to one. Despite nothing happening I was still wary of the entire area, especially because the magic wolves outside of it didn’t exactly line up with my dungeon theory. But then I was overall completely out of my depth about what the was happening here.

Fuck it, why not. If something down there could kill me it could probably kill me up here too.

I emptied my bowls and walked down there with them. I did approach carefully, but everything seemed normal in the daylight. Just some dead wolf bodies. Though I was pretty sure one was missing—a blood trail implying something had dragged it away—maybe that Lynx?

Pushing my foot on one of the headless corpses caused what looked like normal blood—well, normal for sparkle filled blood—to gush out. I gave it another push and caught enough in one of the bowls for a batch this time. Next I went to the wolf corpse with a broken leg that had bone sticking out and used my hand axe to break a fragment off. My materials collected, I escaped as quick as I could without the spilling blood.

The wind briefly picked up and the trees rustled on my way back, the sky darkened a little over head. Thinking about the situation I spooked myself out. But I was the spooky bit. I felt like some deranged high priestess, kicking wolf corpses to collect sparkly blood, and hacking at their bones, so that I can boil it over a fire in the woods, and through communing with my inner self, make a magic potion.

The cargo pants and synthetic jacket certainly ruined the look. But I felt it for a brief moment in there.

Returning to my fire I activated [Restoration Mixtures] again, it was a much more arduous mental challenge—through the protestation over my not identifying all the ingredients—to push the mental button, but I was able to. The skill guided me through boiling the bone, and then adding bark to boil with it, mixing the blood and berries in bit by bit (no fern this time).

And after a little more than an hour I had the shimmer and my success. Which caused me mild panic as well, I had had only 22 energy at the beginning of the cast. Thankfully alchemy drained it 1 at a time every 3 minutes, which allowed me to confirm that the result’s level was not capped because I ran out of resources, though it was a close thing as it took 22 energy in total and only my regeneration saved me. I did wonder what would happen if I ran out of energy mid cast though.

Ohhh, very shiny. I wasn’t quite sure what the soft level cap mechanic did, but it would certainly be nice if it was as high as possible. And the 504 experience I just got was also very much appreciated. On a less happy note, the crafting reward appeared to be sublinear based on level, though I would need a second data point to confirm. Though perhaps there was an interaction with quality going on? I would need a lot more data points.

What did the final product look like?

I was betting that it was the uncommon aspect that upped the shelf life, though it could have been level. And the amount it restored was certainly much higher, though I was again unclear on the math. I would definitely have to experiment. More importantly it confirmed my plan was possible. I had spent 22 energy and 22 aether for two potions that restored 23 aether. Now if I could make an energy potion with the same ratios I could craft potions non stop for experience!

But, assuming I was right about quadratic levels, then to reach level 13 (from 12) crafting these I would have to do this like 333 times… which did not track gently with the 80ish times I would have to craft a level 1 potion to advance to level 2. Even that was going to take me like 3 weeks if the only other thing I did was sleep. Damn these numbers were going to be brutal, even with [Worker]’s experience bonus.

Right now I would be happy enough with 7 more, which would be enough to get me to level 2. Unfortunately that would take more than a day of energy regeneration and the blood will certainly have gone bad by then—already what I had collected was unusable and I would need to get more. I could probably only get one more usage of that skill with the time I had. Hopefully the bone based one was some where closer to 84 experience per potion than 8.

Both of my attempts at exploiting what I already had had been busts. Which ruled out the third idea, which was some sort of resource movement skill.

The path of converting aether to energy simply wouldn’t work with these margins, none were efficient enough. Though they would certainly allow me to craft more potions every day. However, for the moment I could just level up my plant identification with the extra aether. Or maybe I should get an aetheric based crafting skill. Now there was an idea. I could simply feed all the aether potions into crafting more stuff.

But the current plan was to get that [Construction - Field Structures] skill and build my self a shelter of some kind. Especially if it was going to rain. And hopefully some sort of water collection solution, though I might just make a few more burn bowls the hard way. I was already regretting using the energy to make them this set when I could have used it for crafting experience.

[when drinking: Whoah, that’s quite the hit]

Level 1 (Soft Cap 13) Experience: 209 / 4000 Job: Worker

Attention: ⚠️ 1 Skill Points