acaswell
patreon
Chapter 118 - A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World
🕑 Added 2023-04-29 07:27:00 +0000 UTCAlice spent some time relaxing after her previous experiment. She got a few pastries from the kitchen, and then spent a few hours laying in bed with some light reading. Ethan had a few historical records laying around, which were written in a style somewhat similar to the fairytales from Alice’s previous world. Since the writers had focused on making it entertaining to read, the books read surprisingly similarly to an adventure story, especially since basic history in this world included great warriors and powerful monsters as a matter of course.
The exceptional reading speed she had acquired as a result of her {Super Speed Reading} Perk ensured that she finished reading each book within an hour, something which Alice had mixed feelings about. While she usually liked the convenience the Perk provided, finishing a story she was reading for entertainment after only an hour felt oddly dissatisfying.
Finally, after a few hours of reading and relaxing, Alice felt ready to tackle her System notifications and Perks.
The first thing Alice noticed was that during the aftermath of her pervious experiment, she had actually missed a System notification for the {For Science!} Achievement tiering up. It had gained another tier, meaning Alice had acquired another 20% levelling speed for research classes and 5% growth speed for her mental attributes.
Which was a rather small increase, but it certainly didn’t hurt. The Achievement claimed that it would gain some sort of notable boost at Tier V, and Alice was now more than halfway there. She was looking forward to seeing how the Achievement improved.
In addition to her Achievement tier, she had gained enough levels for three new Perks. One Perk from [Explorer of Magic], one from [Scientist], and one from [Survivor]. However, Alice couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed by how few levels she had gained in [Explorer of Magic]. She had only gained one level from an experiment that, while theoretically perfectly safe, had been more than slightly terrifying.
Alice sighed. The low number of levels she had received as a result of the experiment was a problem new to her, but most people experienced a similar problem the moment they hit level 50. The levelling speed penalty that increased every 25 levels was incredibly harsh. Alice had basically escaped the influence of the levelling penalty entirely while between level 50 and level 75, due to her exceptional Achievements and high experience multipliers, but now Alice was facing the same problem as everyone else, albeit at a much higher level.
The levels between 75 and 100 were generally considered the biggest obstacle to most aspiring Immortals. After the class evolution at level 100, one generally aged slowly enough that their levelling speed didn’t matter too much, as long as they weren’t already really old by the time they reached the level 100 class evolution. Even if one levelled up at a glacial pace, since they didn’t get older very fast, it didn’t matter very much as long as they kept working hard. However, between level 75 and 100, people were usually still aging at a noticeable speed, and were simultaneously fighting against major levelling speed penalties.
And now Alice had joined the ranks of people stuck at level 75. She felt that if she wanted to keep levelling up quickly, she really needed to get a few more Achievements or Perks to boost her XP multiplier by a bit.
Before picking Perks, Alice took a moment to count up her total levelling speed bonus for [Explorer of Magic], her highest level Class.
She was getting 400% levelling speed bonus from {Seeker of Truth}, her best Achievement. Another 30% from {Baptized by Broken Mana}, 10% from {Bookworm}, 10% from the class evolution bonus from {Kinetic Manabinder}, 125% from {Seed Creator}, since [Explorer of Magic] was both a magic related Class and a research-related Class. Finally, she was getting a 30% bonus from {Immortal’s Disciple at the Battle Against the Society} and 60% from {Scientific Discoveries}. Apart from that, Alice had some scattered Perks that made her more productive, but nothing else directly influenced her xp gain. In total, that meant she had a 665% bonus to her levelling speed for [Explorer of Magic].
Most Immortals had a levelling speed bonus of around 1,000% or 1,100% by the time they hit Immortality, because that was what was needed to push through the barrier between level 75 and level 100. And now, Alice was going to stare that giant gap in levels in the face and wish she had another 400% levelling speed.
Alice winced at the thought. At least she was at level 75 quite a bit earlier than most people. That meant that she had a lot more time to rack up another few good Achievements to boost her growth speed. While aging speed varied quite a bit from person to person, she knew that past level 75, aging would usually drop to less than half of the normal aging rate.
In other words, Alice was probably aging less than six months for every year that passed now. Which was a strange thought, since Alice was still only physically sixteen. If one discounted the effect of slowed aging, Alice was less than half a year away from her seventeenth birthday. And she was already aging much slower than a regular human being. For a moment, Alice was struck by the bizarre notion that if she reached Immortality tomorrow, she would be stuck as a teenager for all eternity, which was a rather unpleasant thought. Alice would prefer to reach her early twenties before she stopped aging. Being stuck at age 16 forever sounded awful.
Alice shook her head to clear her thoughts. She hadn’t even reached the class evolution at level 100 yet. It was still an open question whether or not she would reach Immortality at all, and if she did reach Immortality it would still require a lot of hard work and effort. However, thinking about Immortality and her System notifications had calmed her down enough that she felt she could think properly again. Which meant that she had decisions to make.
Alice started scanning her new Perk options.
First of all, Alice checked the potential Perk combinations and new Perks for [Explorer of Magic]. She was probably going to end up combining her level 70 Perk with {Three Seeds}, as she had planned at level 70, but it was worth double checking the new Perks she had available first just in case she saw something amazing.
There was a Perk that gave Alice six new seed slots, which she found somewhat appealing, but not valuable enough to actually pick up since {Seedy Ambitions} already covered her long-term magic seed needs, and another Perk option that gave her improved insights and a 100% boost to levelling speed for research classes if she had successfully concluded a magic experiment within the past year. Alice felt that the second Perk was just an inferior version of {For Science!}, and didn’t really appeal to her very much. She needed boosts to her levelling speed, but a 100% boost just couldn’t keep up with her needs at all. It was also overly specific and hard to keep activated long term.
Alice swapped to the Perk combination menu, and then checked the results of combining {Three Seeds} and {Seedy Ambitions}. Alice grinned to herself. She hadn’t been 100% accurate when guessing what would happen when she combined the two Perks, but she had been close. It was definitely worth combining the two to improve her long term growth. She took one final look at the two Perks she was about to sacrifice.
Three Seeds
Requirements: Explorer of Magic level 30 or higher, Perception 100 or Greater, Magic 100 or Greater
You may form 3 more magic seeds, with a maximum mana conversion ratio of 10% each
Seedy Ambitions
Requirements: Explorer of Magic Class at level 70 or Greater, Intelligence 150 or higher, Magic 150 or higher, At least 5 Magic Seeds, At least 3 Perks related to studying and interacting with Magic seeds
With enough study, you can create an inferior magic seed for ANY subject of study you are interacting with. This requires you to have a strong understanding of the subject, and only one seed can be created this way per month.
These inferior seeds will NOT count towards your magic seed limit. Inferior Seeds are limited to 25% Mana Conversion ratio. They cannot be upgraded via Achievements, but other Perks may interact with them.
Then, she paused. Alice suddenly noticed an issue.
It seemed that currently, Alice had six magic seeds in total. If she combined Three Seeds with another Perk, what exactly would happen if she suddenly had more seeds than her maximum magic seed limit?
Alice had to admit, she had forgotten about this problem when she had been planning to combine {Seedy Ambitions} and {Three Seeds}. Her maximum number of magic seeds would decrease below the number of magic seeds she currently had if the new combined Perk didn’t give her any new magic seed slots.
Alice had no idea what happened if she had more magic seeds than she could theoretically hold. Alice had neglected to research what the result of this problem would be, but she doubted she was the only person to come across this particular issue. After all, since Perk combination existed and plenty of people had used it, it was inevitable that someone else had stumbled across this issue in the past.
She quickly left her room and headed to Ethan’s library, before searching for any information he had on the topic. Luckily, Ethan had prominently placed several books related to research and mage related classes at the front of his library, in a spot where Alice could easily see and reach them.
Alice was pretty sure Ethan had put them there explicitly for her use. He definitely wasn’t worried about levelling up his Mage classes very much, after all, but Alice certainly needed to have references available from time to time.
After rifling through some books. Alice learned that the magic seeds she had gained from the Perk would deactivate. The moment she got some new magic seed slots, she would be able to ‘connect’ her old magic seeds to her new slots, although if the new Perk had different restrictions or maximum mana conversion ratios, the mana conversion ratio of her magic seeds might decrease as a result.
Since Alice had {Scholar of Magic} and {Expanding Comprehension} to boost her mana conversion ratio, she wasn’t very worried about losing a little bit of her mana conversion ratio. She could just raise it again using her Perks. She wasn’t quite sure when she would get some new magic seed slots, but with how often she got new options for magic seed slots from [Explorer of Magic], she doubted it would be an issue for long.
Thus, after a few final moments of hesitation, Alice finished combining her Perks.
Seeds of Ambition
Perk Costs: Three Seeds + Seedy Ambitions sacrificed to create this Perk.
Two times a month, you can create an inferior magic seed with a maximum mana conversion ratio of 30%.
The seed creation rules from {Seedy Ambitions} are applied to this Perk. However, Achievements may now apply to the Inferior magic seeds as they would to other magic seeds.
After Alice sacrificed her {Three Seeds} Perk, Alice felt her maximum number of magic seeds decrease from six to three. The three magic seeds that occupied the magic seed slots created by {Three Seeds} suddenly turned themselves off, as if they were entering a state of hibernation.
Suddenly, Alice no longer had access to pure mana, healing mana, or organic mana. And Alice’s one Perk from [Organic Mage] had also turned itself off, since one of the requirements for the [Organic Mage] Class was to have a 40% mana conversion ratio organic seed, and Alice no longer met that Class requirement. More troublingly, Alice lost {Lesser Organic Vision} from the [Scholar] Class, since that Perk also required her to have access to an organic magic seed.
She could still tell that she had six magic seeds, even though she only had three working right now. It was a very strange feeling.
Since Alice knew this was coming, she only spent a few seconds acknowledging that she had temporarily lost access to some magic seeds before moving on.
The Perk {Seeds of Ambition} was not on cooldown, meaning she could immediately use it. In fact, Alice sensed that she could turn her previous magic seeds into lesser magic seeds. She immediately reactivated her pure mana seed and her organic mana seed. She didn’t need healing mana right now, since it had mostly been used to generate money, and Alice was no longer worried about her finances. She would still reactivate it next month, so that she could level her enchanting classes if she got a new idea for an enchanted item, but she relied on her other two magic seeds much more right now. In particular,{Lesser Organic Vision} was critical for some experiments, and pure mana was fundamentally similar to what the System did in some respects, so Alice was unwilling to wait a month to regain access to it.
Alice was quite happy with the overall result of her Perk combination. Doubling the amount of magic seeds she could create per month would drastically improve the speed she made progress towards forming a System seed. It was worth temporarily losing access to her healing magic seed.
Then, Alice moved on to her [Scholar] Perk.
It was Alice’s first time combining [Scholar] Perks, so after double checking her newly available Perks, Alice started carefully tossing one Perk after another into the Perk combination System menu, trying to get a feel for what would make a good combination with what. A few Perks, such as {Rhetorical Flourish}, were only occasionally useful, and Alice would be more than happy to combine them with something else just to get a more useful Perk. However, it was hard to make a final decision on what she wanted to combine. There were just too many different Perk combinations that had potentially useful results.
Eventually, however, Alice settled on a rather unusual combination of Perks, because she felt that it would provide her with the best growth boost, even if it wouldn’t directly resolve her levelling speed problems.
Alice decided to combine {Super Speed Reading} and {Lesser Reduced Sleep Requirement}.
Lesser Reduced Sleep Requirement
Requirements: Scholar level 10 or higher, Endurance 75 or greater
Your body needs 10% less sleep every day, and your sleeping habits will be better optimized for the amount of sleep your body is able to function with.
Lesser reduced sleep requirement was surprisingly useful, even now. It removed about an hour of sleep from the time Alice needed each night in order to function. Plenty of Alice’s research was restricted by other cooldowns or supply problems. Despite that fact, Alice was still very happy with having an extra hour every day to work on projects or relax. It was a Perk that didn’t seem to do much, but Alice found it quite useful.
However, even though the perk was still useful, Alice still eventually decided to sacrifice it, because the combined Perk she could create with it felt very useful to her.
Super Speed Reading
Requirements: Scholar level 45 or higher, Intelligence 150 or higher, Perception 100 or higher
While reading any form of written text, you can read and process information ten times faster than before. Your comprehension abilities are also greatly enhanced while reading (note - this bonus only applies to things you are reading. If you are reading and doing something else at the same time, only reading gets this comprehension bonus).
{Super Speed Reading} was the other Perk she decided to sacrifice, even though it was also a fairly useful perk. It allowed Alice to quickly absorb and understand information contained inside of books. She used it several times a day to parse information she needed in the library of the magic academy, and more recently, Ethan’s library. While a lot of Alice’s research was in new territory that hadn’t been explored by other people, there was plenty of previous experiments that had been conducted by natives of this world that Alice found useful to study as a method of improving her understanding of the System and the way mana and magic worked. Losing this Perk would definitely sting, even if it wasn’t vital to her growth.
However, the combined Perk was very appealing to Alice.
Sleep Reading
Perk Costs: Lesser Reduced Sleep Requirement + Super Speed Reading
Any time you are asleep, so long as you are close to or touching a book and have permission to read it from the owner of that book, you may read it inside of your dreams. This will not affect your sleep, meaning you will still fully rest after a night of sleeping, and all of the speed and comprehension bonuses offered previously offered by {Super Speed Reading} will still apply while you are asleep.
Note: Any books stored inside of any storage Perks you have are considered to be touching you at all times for the purposes of this Perk.
Normally, Alice might have hesitated to create this Perk. After all, she needed to be in contact with a lot of books at once to properly take advantage of this Perk. Books were quite expensive, and unless Alice had a lot of books, the Perk wouldn’t be very useful.
Luckily, she was the apprentice of an Immortal now.
After creating the Perk, Alice quickly wrote a message and had one of the [Servants] carry it to Ethan for her. Twenty minutes later, one crate after another of books arrived in Alice’s room, each one packed with a variety of useful books on geography, history, biology, and magic. There were also several case studies and records of specific experiments that had been done on magic seeds and mana baptisms. Ethan also wrote a message to her, letting her know that one of the servants would go check the local bookstores in the capital and get a copy of any other books she might find useful or interesting.
Ethan didn’t seem fazed at all by the fact that he was probably dumping dozens of gold crowns into helping Alice make her Perk stronger. All she had needed to say was that she had recently acquired a Perk that required lots of books related to her field of study. Ethan hadn’t asked for any further details, and had immediately sent her everything he felt would be useful.
Sometimes, it was really quite nice to be an Immortal’s apprentice.
After that, Alice started focusing on her final Perk.
It had been a long time since she last got a new Perk in [Survivor]. She didn’t gain levels in the class very quickly, after all. However, a couple of the Perks in the Class were very useful. {Adrenaline Rush}, for example, remained one of Alice’s most reliable combat Perks, and {Moderate Tissue Regeneration} was Alice’s go-to Perk for if she got hurt or an experiment went wrong.
However, there were also plenty of Perks that Alice only found somewhat useful, or didn’t use very often at all.
After messing with several Perk options, Alice eventually combined {Sixth Sense} and {Sense Hostility}.
Sense hostility
Requirements: Survivor level 35 or higher, Perception 100 or higher
Whenever any being gazes upon you with hostile intentions, you will sense it, as well as sense the direction of the entity in question and its power relative to you. If said being is significantly stronger than you, or is too far away, locating them may be impossible. Improves the effect of the {Perception} attribute by 20%. Enhanced by your Perception attribute.
Sixth Sense
Requirements: Survivor level 25 or higher, Perception 100 or greater, Magic greater than 0
You gain some ability to intuitively sense the mana around you with a sort of ‘sixth sense,’ with particular focus placed on the fluctuations of mana that only monsters emit into their surroundings
Both of these Perks were still somewhat useful to Alice. {Sense Hostility} occasionally provided Alice with a warning sign if someone was watching her with hostile intentions, and {Sixth Sense} provided her with information about nearby monsters so that she could avoid fights when she was in the wilderness.
However, these days, Alice didn’t fear most monsters. She was good enough at fighting that she could deal with most weaker monsters, and so the Perk had lost a great deal of its usefulness. And while losing {Sense Hostility} would sting quite a bit, Alice was guessing that the Perk wouldn’t be able to keep up with the level of anyone sent to harm her anymore. After all, Alice was now a ‘combat-specialized’ mage training under an Immortal. Anyone sent to harm her would probably have Perks to counter things like {Sense Hostility}, meaning that Alice needed to upgrade the Perk or accept that it was no longer useful.
Combining the two Perks would hopefully fix this problem.
Enhanced Senses
Perk Costs: Sixth Sense + Sense Hostility
Your [Perception] Stat effectiveness is enhanced by 30%.
You intuitively sense the mana in your surroundings, both human and monstrous, and are able to pick up any information that you would normally have access to. This is effective within a range of a few hundred meters.
If any creature has sensed you nearby and has hostile intentions towards you, you will immediately be able to sense it, and will also get a very rough idea of how strong that creature is in comparison to you.
If a creature you have already sensed initiates an attack against you and this Perk has not activated within the past day, for 10 seconds you will gain enhanced knowledge of that creature’s attack and position, and will gain a 20% boost to Dexterity and Perception.
The effectiveness of this Perk is significantly increased with your Perception stat
The sensing ability of both Perks she had used as fodder had been significantly enhanced, and Alice had gotten an extra 30% Perception effectiveness on top of that. In addition, Alice had gained another Perk effect that somewhat resembled {Adrenaline Rush}, which made it easier for her to survive any unexpected ambushes or problems. Alice had very little lasting power in a fight, since she could burn through her mana very quickly and several of her Perks could only be activated once a day. However, with the increasing strength of Alice’s life-saving Perks, it was much easier for Alice to escape any situation that put her in danger.
After looking over her final Perk combination, Alice nodded to herself. She had finished dealing with her System notifications, at least for now. Since she hadn’t gotten any Achievements that would boost her levelling speed recently, she decided to ask Ethan if there were any good Achievements she should aim for that might not be recorded by the Church of the System, and that she should also pay another visit to the local branch of the church to consult their records of various Achievements. She had already scanned it a few times to try to find something that was both useful and easy to get, but hadn’t found anything that she felt fit her needs. However, Alice was holding on to the vague hope that she had simply missed something and would find it if she checked again.
As Alice thought of talking to Ethan about Achievements, Alice frowned.
Now that her System notifications were dealt with, she needed to actually start preparing for the tea party. She made a mental note to herself to ask about her {Etiquette} teacher when she spoke with Ethan later. And to get a few books on Illvarian etiquette as well, so that she could read up on the subject while she was asleep. Even though she wasn’t entirely looking forward to the event, she would do her best to fit in and make the event useful to her. She just hoped she didn’t make a fool of herself when the tea party actually came.
Author’s Note: For some reason my spine kind of hurts today. Sitting down and editing is a bit painful. Blehh. I wonder if I slept on it wrong somehow?
Comments
acaswell
Fixed. Pretend you saw nothing. XD
acaswell
To be fair, repairing organs and missing limbs isn't too difficult in this world, and as an Immortal's apprentice Ethan would absolutely help her get a healer if she lost her eyes for whatever reason. But yes, that would work.
MinE
Plus she doesn't need her eyes to read; its probably never going to be useful , but she can use sleep reading even if her eyes aren't working.
MinE
I hope she fleshes out her language skills because assuming she can gain skill levels in her sleep she has the equivalent of 60 hrs a day to power level her language skills. P.s There’s doesnt seem to be a downside to learning more skills, and the more languages she knows the easier she is going to be able to acquire more knowledge.
Stephen Place
Bookworm better have an upgrade soon. Going from rarity 3 for reading 50 books in one year to however many she can read now??
MinE
I hope she gets a new achievement soon. P.s Getting her last stat to 120 and getting a math seed are things I am waiting for.
MinE
Yah that one is kinda useless.
MinE
Only for level 80 and above perks.
CaylaCat
+100% xp merged with the +20%xp/experiment would likely fix a lot of problems. was she able to merge perks with already merged perks?
Enrico Snipes
Sleep within your sleep for how boring a book is XD
Derek Walker
A 100% increase, the way increases are added here, is about an actual 15% increase in leveling speed relative to before, which shouldn’t really close the gap that much. She gets 20% per successful experiment, so any perk, like this one that help get many more experiments in the long run is better.
Margaret Lloyd
If this is typical, then immortals pbably offset the Lv75 slowdown by taking the +100 percent boost perk for each of their classes as they reach it, that alone takes them halfway to the +1000 "needed" assuming all their classes overlap. Ethan would not be happy Alice skipped it. Of course he didn't tell her she needs to pick xp boosting perks either. Maybe he assumes it is obvious but not all potential immortals are necessarily smart...
bcdp
I'd like to think, I would want sleep-read any book I could get my hands on. With her perfect memory, it's like downloading Wikipedia to access it even when offline. Not sure if booring books are too booring when you are asleep. :-)
Luboš Hemala
I wonder what she will do once she reads all available books to her. Granted, that will take time, but I doubt there is that many books she would want to read anyway. After couple hundreds of books maybe the original perks would be better.
Apoca
Wait... I think I misspoke. I don't remember the name... maybe Fractured seed? It gives a very bad seed and the perk cannot be used for tier 2 perks
D
Exept that it can break classes and perks too : D
Apoca
Also, can Alice go and switch her {Broken Seed} perk out? It cannot be merged and with the new {Seeds of Ambition} perk it's quite useless
Apoca
I wonder if Alice is missing Reset as she gets perks with month long cooldowns
bcdp
Why? A little bit of planning ahead will go a long way: she can have read overnight what she need for today's work. And with 200 books a month, it won't take long until she has read and memorized (another perk) her usual reference books.
Arkeus
You basically have to read a lot during the day yeah. The perk is probably really good for getting very fast a high degree of knowledge on everythning. It's just bad for actually doing stuff.
bcdp
Oh, didn't notice the new Perk is only talking about books. Strange, as the original Perk had no such restriction and explicitly mentioned all written text. Wonder if that's an editing error (as Alice herself doesn't comment on that trade-off) or intentional.
bcdp
deus vault, not sure if I parsed the part about memorization correct, so ignore it, if it's redundant, but thought I point out she has several memory perks, including photographic memory.
Drake_Azathoth
Also, given her description of needing to sleep with a LOT of books at once... I think her idea is that the perk does mention a speed limit on the reading, and that the book needs to be touching you, but not a limit as to how many books you can read at the same time. So you might be able to read a single book ten times as fast with the one perk while awake, but you can read every book touching you ten times as fast while asleep. If it does work that way, it's absolutely amazing.
Drake_Azathoth
One benefit of the sleep reading I don't think anyone has really dwelled on - this is a great perk for letting her absorb information that she otherwise finds boring, like etiquette and geography and so forth. She can still read stuff while awake that interests her, and then reread it while asleep for enhanced understanding, so unless there are a TON of thrilling textbooks she's found, it's an amazing perk for anyone who isn't a robot completely willing to bore themselves to death to prepare for stuff.
MikeL
Yes and no. I guess all those files from the Starry people would be slower while awake, but books will be much faster. At least now she can enjoy fiction novels.
Abborre
I think she has stopped geting any experience for simple things she would have at lvl 20. 700% *0=0 but getting stronger gets new results
Derek Walker
There could be work arounds. Have Ethan’s people transcribe the notes. She has permission to read the transcription. That’s just one example. The system here seems flexible lol
Margaret Lloyd
Enhanced Senses is a clear win. But both the others feel like minimal gains over what she already had, never mind what she had plus another high level perk. I suspect a bit of combining for the sake of simplifying the character sheet on the part of the author.
Margaret Lloyd
But only while sleeping with the book with the permission of the owner. This shuts down most of the usefulness of her school library, or her ability to use it for intelligence gathering. For example unless the system allows change of ownership via theft she is never speed reading the Society's notes again.
bcdp
I don't think she will lose a lot of time because she doesn't read as fast while awake. There are very few things that are blocked by having to read something *now* that would take us normals most of a day. Even if you are somehow blocked, you have usually other work you can do. That is, she can simply add those books to her nightly studying. And for looking up things: That doesn't take that much time as you don't need to read the whole book (and she can add it to her nightly reading afterwards, for completeness). Also, she will read over 200 books a month. That will cover a lot of her studies. But most importantly, she will have time to broaden her horizon into topics outside her immediate interest. Like not wasting daylight hours to study Etiquette.
deus vault
it's a great perk. but sleep reading is leading to become pretty useless if she won't evolve it further. the can gain some knowledge pretty quickly, but once she has that knowledge what will she use the perk for? it only has short usefullness in it's current state. though it can be better depending on how it works. could be that she isn't conciously aware of herself while she is reading. so having material compiled and compiling research will only allow her to review it shortly before waking back up. which is useful, sure. but right now it is still useful to gather massive amounts of knowledge about a specific topic. however, if she manages to evolve it before it ends it's usefulness, it could still be a pretty good choice. I believe it can be pretty awsome if she essentially creates a perk that allows her to work while she was asleep or to manage and create dreams. combining it with a visualization or an imagination perk and a writing perk could lead her to creating and managing her own dreams. eventually she could create theories and learn fully while sleeping. all she has to do is have the material written down. maybe having 6-60 more hours of work. however, the perk as it is right now is inferior to the reading comprehension perk. the point of books is to store and gather information. our brains are limited, and there is only so much she could learn and memorize. being able to access stored knowledge and information could be much more useful than just having a reading sleeping perk. imagine having an external database, and having an unlimited memory in the form of books. which is essentially what I think the reading/writing evolution is all about. imagine you want to do specific research, you look for, find something, then search again. the reading comprehension allows her to filter through books and research to compile knowledge. just like a scholor should. she is not supposed to remember everything. when she reaches the limits of the skill, depending on how many books she has to read, it should be the end of it's usefulness. compared to reading comprehension which will always be useful.
Derek Walker
70 hours of normal reading time. 7 with 10x speed. For the most part, this perk is an absolute boost. Before this perk, she could not read while sleeping. After this perk she can read 7 books a night while sleeping. (The 10x reading speed applies while sleep reading) Even if every day she spent 5 hours reading, for 5 books a day (she did not read this much) this is still a gain of like 2 while books worth of reading per day, and she frees up those 5 hours of awake reading to do something else. This is a ridiculous increase in efficiency if she abuses this perk correctly.
bcdp
Yeah, had the same thought. And actually, she is already 2/3 there: Her xp boost is 665%, that means she levels 100%+665% = 7,65 times as fast. And those becoming immortal have an average of 1050%, that is 11,5 times. 7,65/11,5 = 66,5%. Or the other way around: Those becoming immortal gain xp 11,5/7,65 = 1,5 times, i.e. 50% faster.
D
Where do you get your math? The speed reading is no time dilation. It makes her faster! In this very chapter, it says she can read a book in an hour. If she slept with the perk 6 hours, thats now 7. Thats 7 books, not 70 hours. And dont forget! During the remaining time in the day, her reading speed is 10 times SLOWER then it was before. So instead of 1 hour per book, it will be 10 hours.
bcdp
Yeah, I forgot about removing Perks and stuff. Don't remember if that really let's you pick a replacement and how feasable that is (how many candidates for removal does she have).
Derek Walker
She gets the 10x speed reading boost while sleeping so she now has 60-80 hours of reading time a day (namely sleeping while reading)
bcdp
IDFree, that's such a cool use of that Perk, that I completely overlooked. Kudos to you!
D
Sleep Reading isnt quite a good trade, right? How long does she even sleep? Before 7, now with the perk lost 8? With the speed reading bonus, she can finish a book in an hour. So, 8 Books per sleep phase. On the other hand, now, when ever she doesnt sleep and need to read something up, it will take her 10 times longer to read and comprehend. Whats she gonna do? Take a nap when ever she needs to read up on something? Does she technically get more time for other things since she can read stuff in her sleep? Sure. Does she lose a lot of time because now, for the remaining 16 hours her reading and comprehension speed is 10 times of what it was... well, yes. Remember, 1 hour for reading and understanding a book takes now 10 hours... Oh, and depending on what the system understands under 'sleeping while reading', there will be no other cognitive work while doing so. No musing over experiments. No taking notes (well i guess she doesnt need them). No thinking of new ideas when reading stuff. Thats bad, no?
bcdp
Well, deus vault, your arguments contradict themselves a bit. If she has stopped finding any useful book, it implies she already read almost any specific book she could need. Or alternatively, if there are still those specific books to read, she obviously hasn't run out of useful books to read. The most probably scenario that meets both prerequesites are books not already available to Ethan, only buying/burrowing them when a very specific issue comes up. But it's still only a problem if she can't read them at her leisure. Same with the argument about needing to sleep and an immortal having plenty of time. If waiting for sleep is a problem, then waiting to be immortal is, too. And if it is not, then neither is waiting for sleep. But I agree, there will be an end of usefullness to that skill [edit: I retract that after reading IDFree's comment]. I don't think waiting to sleep is such a big issue. There are few things that need an answer from a book *now*. Also, there are naps and Ethan. I think it all comes down to momentum, as Luboš Hemala mentioned about the other perk. This new perk allows her to either read more of her backlog, use the time she spent reading until now for other things, or more importantly, catch up to things that don't interest her as much, but are needed, like Etiquette without "wasting" daytime, i.e. without having to cut her other activities.
Derek Walker
If this was merely sleeping while reading, I think it would be a waste. As while she would get 8 hours more reading time a day, she would lose a lot of valuable time in the moment without this perk. Since the 10x bonus applies while reading, that extra 60-80 hours a day of reading is quite broken, given how she can leverage help from Ethan
Derek Walker
This is sort of nitpicking on the math, but an immortal with a boost of 1000% is only leveling about 50% faster than Alice. Given how young she is, and how much almost all achievements and perks from all her classes indirectly boost leveling speed (reading while sleeping, faster reading, increasing perception etc) by allowing her to conduct experiments more efficiently, it doesn’t feel like she even needs a leveling boost to reach immortality. (Story wise it helps otherwise larger time jumps would be needed) but it seems she’s basically secured herself being an immortal as long as she doesn’t die or leave the planet for earth.
IDFree
Even if there are no books to read this perk would be far from useless because of both enhanced comprehension and time dilation. It would still be useful for things like planning as long as she can have all the relevant information written down beforehand. Edit: For example, she could have all the relevant theory books and the experiments' reports and her notes with her written down, and spend her sleep reading them over and over again, trying to understand the bigger picture and benefitting from the comprehension bonus all the while. Like a proper brainstorming session, but for the whole night
Luboš Hemala
She still has the option to remove the perk by a priest later, so yeah, that would be a great choice.
Luboš Hemala
The point was for her momentum. The sooner she advances her studies, the better. She could even try to form system seeds early. Moreover, how would the merge look if she chose the +6 perk to merge with Seedy Ambitions? Could she form 3 seeds a month? Ultimately, it is probably a moot argument. You are correct that it could result in a wasted perk slot, if she wouldn't opt to remove the perk by a priest. And there is only so many interesting seeds to form, so who knows.
deus vault
idk. the sleep improvement is not much. there aren't THAT many books. so when she stops finding any useful books she simply will stop sleeping with them. then when she needs one specific she'll have to wait until she's asleep. imo, you only need a specific book, and 10 times improvement in reading and comprehension is such a huge benefit that I don't really see a point if you don't have that many books to read. which you won't, eventually. the knowledge you gain otherwise is only given to you while sleeping. which isn't that good for an immortal who has plenty of time anyways to gain knowledge.
bcdp
If her primary goal was reaching immortality, she should have taken that perk for sure. That's 25% (100 of the 400 she is missing) of the way she still needs to go. Short term, she does more than enough sucessful experiments, and long term, after she has become immortal, who cares about that. But getting immortal by picking pure XP boosts uses up a resource, using a handful of perks, instead of the "free" boosts from achievements. So the wrong choice if immortality is not her primary concern.
IDFree
Amusingly enough, the main upside of this perk for a workaholic like Alice is that she is no longer tempted to skimp on sleep.
bcdp
I think he meant 13 *new* seeds. But yeah, since it was free immediately, it changes to 7 month until she gets the same amount of seeds with both perks: in 7 month she will have 6-3+2 + 7*2 = 19 seeds overall. With the other perk, she would have had 6 + 6 + 7*1 = 19 seeds, too. So her chosen perk only gets better after 7 month have passed. But the original argument, that she is only worse off, if she can't merge again within that time, is a strange one to me, since she will have to use another perk merge. Sure, if she intends to get another seed perk later, the calculation is right, and she should have taken 6 seeds now, losing nothing long term. But I don't see why she would take another seed perk in the future when she has 19 then and getting 2 more each month. So the real trade-off is losing a perk for having some instant seeds now.
Derek Walker
A little confused why seeker of truth didn’t upgrade, unless an achievement can’t upgrade once it’s rarity 10
Abborre
Does her precise mana mesurement work with enhanced senses? Can she sense a 1% reduktion in ambient mana 100s of meters away and therefore detect percs?
Enrico Snipes
Being able to do anything while sleeping is a huge improvement in time efficiency, so she doesn't have to waste time reading during the day
Abborre
She takes perks that makes her better and stronger and not perks that just enhances the results of what she can already do.
IDFree
Nah, the speed bonus applies, so now she gets 60-80h of reading per day for free.
Emblyon
Though that boost is only active for a year after a successful magic experiment.
Arkeus
Amusingly the one hour of sleep a day she gained would give her ten hours of reading... More than she can get of sleep reading now. It's arguably a strict downgrade.
Arkeus
Yeah the 100% levelling boost is incredibly useful to her, she just dislikes those boosts compared to skills that actually do things lol. Such a boost then combined could basically assure her immortality
Arkeus
She currently has 5 seeds and gets two seeds a month, so she would get 13 seeds in four months, assuming she never uses her reset for that skill. However honestly both six seeds or the new perk give her more than enough seeds to do whatever she wants, and six seeds give it immediately. The advantage of what she got is that it fits her 'style' more, and it gives higher ratios to boot. The disadvantage is that it means she won't see those advantages for months.
mahu
It work, but only in sleep. So she lost bit of flexibility, but can now read like 6h a day.
Hasse
TFC but I spotted a small mistake "It was a very a Perk that didn’t seem to do much"
Sdff
Precision maybe? It's hard to come up with precision metrics for Magic. The Author could use stuff like cm, mm, nm for materials movement magics like telepathy, but how would you rate biological reactions precision?
deus vault
10 times reading comprehension is much better than sleep reading imo.
IDFree
A, refusing the 100% leveling speed boost because it's too little and requires upkeep, sounds like a rich people's problem. Still, even if she didn't get anything better and unexpectedly started to have a mediocre leveling speed from now I would still give her better than even odds of reaching immortality, although she might not have been in her early twenties then.
Luboš Hemala
Thanks for the chapter :-) I don't know, 6 new seeds sounded like a banger to me. She will have the same amount of seeds in 8 months (-3 + 8*2 = 13, or 8*1 + 6 = 14). Sure, if she didn't manage next perk merge within three quarters of a year she could be worse off in the long term, slightly. BUT she could enjoy 6 new seed right now to explore. Though I am unclear in what way are the seed from Seedy Ambition now inferior. The pure mana seed didn't decrease it's conversion ratio, did it? Anyway, the sleeping perk is super awesome! :-D ** Edit ** The math of seed count, as I understand it. 1) If she picked a new perk, she would gain 6 new seeds and still could form 1 inferior seed a month. That would be 14 seeds total in next 8 months (6+8). In the coming months she would have 6 (current),7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14.. seeds more. 2) But she picked to merge the perks, therefore lost 3 seed slots, but gained ability to form 2 inferior seeds a month. That is 15 seeds in next 8 months (-3+16). In the coming months she would have -1 (current),1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15. Overall, it seems to be in 7 months the same.
