40 Vol 1. pt. 40 Patch 7.0: Pirates and Scholars (1/2)
”Ah! I keep on forgetting, how horrible of me. You there,” Thelmes looks at Fenrir, ”do you ever feel the spirit of a beast within you?”
”Uhh, I… guess you could call it that. Like, sometimes when I'm fighting, I'll feel this animalistic instinct want to take over. If I let it, then I fight better. I think,” Fenrir answers.
”Yeah, I can tell that he gives in to his Feral,” Cassiel adds onto his answer.
”Hmm, hmm. I see,” Thelmes leans over the desk to get a better look at Fenrir. ”Open your mouth as wide as you can.”
Fenrir opens his mouth with an ”ahhhh.”
”Alright, look down.”
Fenrir looks down, giving Thelmes a better look at his ears.
”I see. Stand up and let me look at your tail.”
Serra snerks. Fenrir stands up and turns around.
”Now, take off your boots,” Thelmes says, jumping out from his chair and walking over to Fenrir's side of the table. He just has regular looking feet. His toenails may be a bit sharp and pointed, but that's it. Thelmes also checks on his fingernails.
”Thank you, you may sit back down and put your boots back on,” Thelmes says, returning to his chair. He places a hand on Fenrir's card to inscribe it. ”2” pops up next to a word that reads ”Feral.”
”What's Feral?” Fenrir asks.
”Your Feral tier is how monstrous you are. If you start the game as a regular human, you will not advance your Feral tier unless you fight like an animal or monster. Behaving like them will increase it as well. For example, if you hunt an animal and then eat its raw flesh like a wolf or lion would, that would increase your Feral tier. The higher this tier becomes, the more monstrous in both appearance and combat style you will become. However, it is also affected by the player's conscious desire to shape their character into a specific ideal. If you wanted to become an actual wolf, you would be growing hairier already.”
”You can become actual monsters and animals?” Fenrir asks.
”You can! But, only if your Feral tier gets high enough. You cannot start off as pure monsters and animals even though the character creator does let you experiment as them. If you tried, your virtual assistant would have stopped you and shown you the closest thing to your ideal that you could be. Furthermore, there are ten tiers. You started off a tier one since you chose to be a non-human, and somebody such as Indra is a tier ten.”
”Indra? The faction leader?”
”Correct! She is a splendid example of what it means to be Feral. She may have taken on the parts of various different monsters as her own, but she has done so in such a beautiful way that blends together perfectly.”
Fenrir has learned two things: one, one of the most important players in the game is basically a monster; and two, it's possible to either collect or grow body parts from multiple species of animals and monsters at once.
The next test tests their Dexterity. Fenrir and Cassiel have to do side steps, sit-ups, rope climbs, and they have to dodge having wrenches thrown at them.
The reasoning for dodging wrenches being thrown at them by a cat-goblin is ”if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge an arrow!” When asked about it, Fenrir learns that it is apparently a reference to some movie that came out during his grandparents' generation.
Fenrir's Dexterity is fifteen, Cassiel's is thirteen, and Rock gets… three. Thelmes didn't do the wrench throwing test with Rock because ”I'd feel too bad if I hit her.”
”Finally, we come to the last attribute important enough to test: Fortitude,” Thelmes explains. ”It is a measure of your ability to resist mental attacks and detrimental effects, as well as a measure of how well boons will affect you. The higher it is, the less effective negative effects are while the positive effects grow stronger. The lower it is, the more effective negative effects are while the less effective positive ones are. Of course, the caster's ability affects the outcome as well.”
”How do you measure it?” Fenrir asks.
”Like this.” Thelmes places a hand on Fenrir's forehead.
Searing pain courses throughout his head. His vision immediately becomes blurry, it sounds like something is screaming inside of his head – his head feels like it is going to split open at any second. Even with pain only set to fifty percent, it hurts more than anything else in this game has by far.
When it's finally over, Fenrir has no idea how long Thelmes has been standing away from him. ”How many fingers am I holding up?” the cat-goblin asks.
”Three,” Fenrir says.
”Wrong, four. How about now?”
”Seven.”
”Splendid! Given the time until full recovery, your Fortitude is only at six. I take it that you have not been subject to many spells yet?”
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”Only healing…” Fenrir groans, rubbing his forehead with both of his hands.
”I strongly suggest you train your Fortitude. It will likely be up to nine now just from experiencing the test, but the increase will not count until you are tested again.
Cassiel looks obviously pained from the test as well, but she recovers much more quickly than Fenrir did. She gets a ten.