Evolution of a Healer

The first thing Cyn checked was her stat screen to see how fast her mana was regenerating.

Name: Cynthia Price

Race: [Human]

Class: [Mage] Level 1

Profession: N/A

Health Points: 13/20

Mana Points: 65/100

Stamina Points: 22/30

Free Points: 3

Vitality: 2

Mind: 6

Will: 7

Strength: 2

Agility: 2

Luck: 3

Racial Skills: [Dimensional Translator][Inspect]

Class Skills: [Restoration][Mana Ball][Mage Regeneration]

Profession Skills: N/A

Feats: N/A

A lot faster than her health or stamina did, that was clear. With that kind of mana regeneration, there was no reason for her to not do a little bit of testing. Keeping her menu open, Cyn attempted to use Restoration. And nothing happened. The skill completely failed to activate. It appeared only certain skills could be used while in the menu. This result was annoying, but ultimately unlikely to be a problem long term. As an alternative, Cyn closed her menu, activated Restoration for three seconds, then took another look.

Health Points: 16/20

Mana Points: 54/100

That came close to being one health at the price of four mana, but not quite. She also did not think that math made sense for her uses of the skill during and right after combat. There had to be other factors she could not easily calculate affecting the mana cost, such as closing wounds or using it in combat. She would have to just keep winging its use for now and checking her mana often. She could also see the possibility that it would never be calculable, if the concept of skill experience existed. Cyn couldn’t rule that out, especially since Inspect had already proven to her that there was a tangible effect to using the skill repeatedly. Next on the todo list was her notifications.

Class experience earned for assisting in the death of Illuminant Harvester - Level 2.

Experience has been split among all living members of your dungeon party.

There were six of those notifications, all identical. Thankfully for her and Dana, who had only fought one of the arachnids, it did not seem to matter they were not directly involved with the other skirmishes. Cyn removed all of her kill notifications, leaving only one more to look at. If she had not already seen she had leveled up, this notification would have informed her of that.

Class level up! [Mage] is now level 1

+1 Vitality, +3 Mind, +3 Will, +1 Strength, +1 Agility, +1 Luck

+3 free points

Cyn had forgotten about the free points. The last few times she looked at her stats it was to check her resources, and she had not even connected her new resource maximums to having additional stat points. It was only three points right now, but it was going to be three points every single time she leveled up. Regardless of the level cap, unless it was super low, that was going to quickly add up to a ton of extra stats.

She had only played a handful of games where free points existed, or would even be reasonable. Most of the time anything that was not a ‘primary’ stat for your class had limited, if any, function. Here though, Cyn had the feeling there was no such limitation. She was pretty sure if she put a point in strength it would make her stronger. Making the spending of these points a really important decision in shaping her ability to not only survive, but also function in her role.

Regardless if you looked at the short or long term, she needed more health. Cyn wasn’t sure how much damage she had taken when Dana knocked her over, since she healed herself shortly after, but it was probably a significant chunk compared to her small pool. If her healing skills continued to force her into melee, her current health situation was not going to cut it. Suspecting it was directly tied to hit points, she placed her first free point into vitality using Inspect. Proven correct by her increasing max hit points, she also placed her second free point there. She only gained a single vitality point when leveling up, so at least some of her free points every level would probably end up in vitality for the foreseeable future.

Where she should put her third point was a harder decision. Cyn threw out strength as a contender immediately. While bonking the Illuminant Harvester had been disappointing, she didn’t really intend to go around meleeing her enemies. Not for long, anyway. She lacked a good way to deal damage, and was still too concerned about the description of Mana Ball to want to attempt it in an enclosed space, but bonks were not the answer.

Mind and Will were clearly the primary stats for Mage, but Cyn could barely guess at what they did individually. They were probably tied to mana and power for skills that used mana, maybe even mana consumption on a skill like Restoration. Cyn did not feel like she needed more mana, and without more information decided that adding more Mind and Will was just likely to mess up her attempts to gauge the effect and cost of Restoration, for little benefit. At least for now. She also got a good chunk of those stats automatically on level up, and had started with a higher value of them, so it's not like she would be lacking.

Agility and luck were the real competitors here. Thinking back to class selection, Rogue dumped three of its four points into a single stat, and that was agility. Seeing as Rogues were also described as being focused on speed, logically agility would affect movement speed. And probably not just by making her walk faster. If it affected her reaction speed, she might be able to avoid incidents of friendly fire in the future.

Luck on the other hand was a total wildcard. It could do any number of things, from increasing the chance of dealing a critical hit, resistance to deathblows, to increasing the amount or quality of treasure. Or none of those things and instead something completely unrelated to combat. Luck was rarely a bad stat to have, so the point would probably not be wasted if used. But she also would be unlikely to feel the effects directly.

For a split second Cyn thought about just putting this final point into vitality as well. She was not eager to find out if respawning after death applied here, making staying alive the highest priority. And vitality was the only stat that had a clear effect on survival. But ultimately, she ended up placing her third point into agility. The ability to move faster, even a little bit, was hard to pass up.

Feeling satisfied with her choices, Cyn removed her still pending level up notification and took one last look at her stats.

Name: Cynthia Price

Race: [Human]

Class: [Mage] Level 1

Profession: N/A

Health Points: 20/40

Mana Points: 64/100

Stamina Points: 22/40

Free Points: 0

Vitality: 4

Mind: 6

Will: 7

Strength: 2

Agility: 3

Luck: 3

Racial Skills: [Dimensional Translator][Inspect]

Class Skills: [Restoration][Mana Ball][Mage Regeneration]

Profession Skills: N/A

Feats: N/A

Her resources had continued to regenerate, if only by a handful of points in the case of health and stamina, while Cyn was thinking about her free point allocation. Her mana had basically recovered from testing Restoration already. Satisfied overall, she closed her menu to check in on the rest of the party.

Scott’s eyes were fully closed, seemingly asleep or at least resting more deeply than the rest of them. Dana and Sam both were in their menu, based on their shared unfocused gazes. Hex, clearly on watch, glanced at Cyn briefly before returning to glaring into the dark cavern. Her looking around had probably cued the Rogue in that she was no longer in the menu. Or he was just reacting to seeing movement.

With nothing to do but wait out her resource regeneration, she decided a nap was the best course of action. It wasn’t much more comfortable than just being on the ground, but she could wrap herself up in her cloak and almost pretend she wasn’t in a giant spider infested mineshaft. And that was enough to send Cyn’s exhausted mind off to sleep.

***

Waking back up to the hushed whispers of her party and still in a glowing, webbed hellscape proved this whole thing was not a dream to Cyn. Dwelling on it would only lead to a spiral though, and this was not the time or place. There was nothing she could do about it anyway. She could freak out later if they managed to escape this abandoned mine.

The whispers stopped as she sat up, glancing around. Her surroundings were the same as when she went to sleep, and there was no indication of how much time had passed. To one side Scott, Dana, and Hex were all sitting close together, clearly awake and the source of the whispers. They had put as much distance as possible between themselves and her, without leaving the ‘safe’ area. Sam was on the opposite side of her, flat on his back and snoring softly. Deciding to let him keep doing that, Cyn got up as quietly as possible to join the others a few steps away.

Giving her a small smile as Cyn resettled on the floor, Scott whispered, “Feeling better?”

She nodded. She was feeling better, by a long shot. “Much. How long was I asleep?”

“Few hours, I reckon. Sam too. We’ve been taking turns on watch and resting our eyes.” Guilt flooded Cyn at the Guardian’s words. She had seriously been asleep so long they skipped her turn on watch?

Her feelings must have been plain to see, because Hex quickly added in, “You shouldn’t worry about it. You and Sam were both asleep before ending up in the blue room, right? It makes sense, then, being already tired before we got here.” The Rogue's words were of little comfort, but Cyn appreciated the effort.

Dana gestured out into the darkness. “We have been discussing where to go in the meantime. Two of the five tunnels out of this room had movement while we were resting. I don’t think whatever it was actually entered this space, but they are definitely occupied. It's hard to tell, though, when none of us can really see with just the webs for light. Scott thinks we will have to investigate the entrance to each tunnel before we make a decision.”

Cyn had a sudden realization that made her feel a bit stupid. She could probably do something about the lack of light. Obviously they had been a little preoccupied since entering the dungeon, but she should not have forgotten about her gift that quickly. Especially since it was literally sitting on her head.

“I need to try something once Sam is awake. I might be able to help us see better, but I am not sure if it's sustainable. And I don’t want to risk the possibility of calling attention to us while someone's asleep.”

The trio looked at her curiously, with Hex being the one to ask, “Oh? Did you get a new skill when you leveled up? None of us did so I assumed no one would.”

Cyn shook her head quickly and pointed to her diadem. “I was given a gift from something, or some place, named The Arcane Hall. I think it works like a headlamp.” Saying it aloud made her realize it was almost too convenient that she was given a gift of light, and the first floor of this dungeon was really dark. Although dark dungeons were a pretty standard concept, making a source of light a safe bet if you were getting a gift for someone entering a dungeon.

“And you are just thinking of this now ?” Before Cyn could try and explain herself, Scott smacked the Rogue in the back of the head. Probably harder than he intended to, since Hex almost did a face plant despite sitting cross-legged.

Scott did not apologize, scolding the younger man as the Rogue rubbed the back of his skull, wincing. “Boy, you were just talking about it being reasonable that the girl was tired. And far as I can tell, she's the only one with a healing skill. Try thinking before you open your trap to piss off the cleric.”

Cyn couldn’t help letting out a genuine laugh. Though the exact words were different, the Guardian’s sentiment was so familiar to her from a lifetime of playing healer class in online games that it was comforting. Unfortunately she did make enough noise to wake up Sam, who once again looked embarrassed at the idea that he might be holding up the party. Insisting he was rested enough, they quickly got him up to speed, before the party had a serious discussion about their sources of water and food. It was clear that until now all of them had been quietly banking on this not being real, making long term plans unnecessary.

With no one really holding onto that illusion anymore, the conversation was unavoidable. Since all of them had been periodically taking drinks the waterskins needed to be refilled before they continued. Cyn had been correct in thinking that for now she was the only one with skills that used mana, but Dana’s quiver allowed her to conjure arrows cheaply with her mana. Even with that the Archer believed she would be able to keep up with both of their water consumption so Cyn could preserve her mana for skills.

As it turned out, Dana actually had pretty high mana due to her stat distribution. While they all agreed that they could talk in exact numbers, doing so felt inexplicably uncomfortable. Knowing that the Archer had started with higher will than other stats, and that her class gained mind on level up, the larger mana pool made sense. Exact numbers were unnecessary anyway, at least in this case.

This conversation also cued them in that while everyone had started with ten pre-allocated stat points, the distributions had been very different. Dana had had slightly higher will and relatively even other stats. Cyn started with high will and mind, with almost all other stats being a single point. Scott and Hex had been mostly even across the board, though the Guardian admitted outright his starting vitality was only one and he was using his free points to make up for it after his accidental class choice. Sam just said he had already come to the conclusion before now that all of them had started with different stats because it did not make any sense for everyone else to have his base strength.

While Cyn and Sam were sleeping the others had actually taken advantage of Dana’s mana and used the conjured water to mostly wash off Hex’s web-covered cloak so he could wear it again. Infusing the skin with mana was apparently as easy as just focusing on doing that, though for the Warrior he did not have enough mana to fill it all at once. The Guardian had no problems helping there, with Hex agreeing to be backup in case the Archer needed help keeping up with consumption. Dana was practically out of mana now, but there shouldn’t be a need for her to use it anytime soon.

Food was an easier discussion, if more confusing than the water situation. They should be hungry by now, but no one was feeling it. With them having ten of the wafers each, and no idea how long they would be in this dungeon, ultimately the party had no trouble agreeing to just hold onto their food supply and see if they felt hungry later. As for their potions, everyone had started with three health potions. Cyn was the only one who received mana potions however, with the others getting stamina potions instead. They collectively agreed that with Cyns healing skill the health potions were going to be saved for emergencies, while the other potions were to be used with individual discretion. With only three available she considered her mana potions to also be emergency items.

With one final talk about how to proceed, they were finally ready to get moving. After Cyn figured out how her diadem worked, that is.

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