Chapter 3-93: Noble Thoughts and Goals (1/2)

Dusk Renewal, Night 17...

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

For a moment, I thought I’d been advanced into a second Level finally, but no.

Noble/1. Leadership. Charisma Mastery/1.

I groaned at nobody in particular. It had taken all of my choices. Perhaps smirking that I STILL couldn’t advance to a Two.

It had also maxed me out in Diplomacy, and given me another point into Lore/History, meaning all my studying on the basic history of the country was getting more focused on specific places and individuals.

I already knew I was going to be doing a lot of reading in my down time, since there was only so much akashic learning I was going to get out of grabbing Ranks. In short, the more I knew, the more the akasha could splinter out into specifics, building upon and broadening what I had learned without it.

2 Ranks already made me informed of recent history to a far higher degree than most of the population, except for local information that would trickle in over time... or I would go look up and have built upon rapidly.

I brought up my Visual File of spreadsheets on what to take, dismissing several of them straight off as my plans had shifted once again.

There was literally no Class I knew of that I could still take... except maybe Magewright, and that was basically an NPC underclass of Artificer, subsumed by it the same way Warrior was subsumed by Melee and Archer.

So, tomorrow I would be taking my first Two. I wanted that to be Melee/2, for one reason only... maximum amount of Soak possible.

It was a minor and stupid reason, and it would only work for two Levels... but since there was no reason NOT to do it that way, I’d take my four additional Soak, thank you.

The key thing would be my first Level to hit Four. That would be my Primary Class, and I wanted that to be Sorcerer.

Once I hit Four... things could advance rather quickly. I should be able to shoot right to Nine in Casting within a week...

In the meantime, I was going to have to take some Theurgic Levels.

I had the equivalent of five trips to Ten of Karma... taking ten Levels at Nine. Although Levels at lower Levels were still much cheaper than taking them later... I definitely did not have the Karma to take twenty Classes to even 10/6x, let alone taking the Theurgic and Archclasses to complement them...

So, I would be getting to Six, and then I would be needing massive amounts of Karma, because getting those Secondary Levels at Eight and Ten was going to be taking ungodly amounts of Karma.

That was fine. As soon as I had Nine Casting, my offensive power was going to reach a new Level... and more importantly, so was my Crafting ability.

I had confirmed that humans who took their racial Caster Level advance at Human/2 were still considered Sixes and couldn’t take 7 Ranks in a skill. Faux Sevens. But I could already take six Ranks as a One, a nod to the fact that I was regaining core knowledge, not accruing new knowledge, and so purely intellectual limits were much looser.

By hitting Nine Caster, I should have the same limit on Ranks, which was important for Spellcrafting... and I would have access to a LOT more key spells. I would be able to make magical items literally no one else on the planet was capable of with my multi-disciplinary Casting.

So many rep counts required... I sighed despite myself.

Still, the Karma was coming, and with Levels came more Slots, and more spells per day. I was now in basically a ‘safe’ place, so expending all my Slots every day was basically a given. But I couldn’t work on Weirding Metas until I had at least my II’s open.

Annoying...

The implications of taking a Noble Level were apparent to me, if not to an outsider.

It wanted me to build an Allegiance!

A Noble was considered a Monarch of the appropriate Rank for granting benefits to their Allegiance. It was a minor benefit, and certainly didn’t excuse a Noble’s lack of personal power at all... but it meant that a deposed king who was a Noble/10 with ten followers to his name provided the same benefits to his followers as a non-Noble Monarch with 100 million followers would...

The Class had average skill points, one good save, average Hit Dice, average AB... but a Noble was still made to be followed. It was a Class purely there to rule and lead others. You literally had to be born into a ruling family or be a political authority to take Levels in it.

Nothing I’d read indicated that the natives of this world had stumbled onto the Allegiance system yet. If they had, the nations of this world would have factionalized further, swearing under this or that other powerful individuals, and their loyalty would absolutely trump that to any particular nation, race, or landmass.