The Way Ahead

Chapter 7: Firmly Outside Normal

Level Up!

Research 23

Congratulations! For having your first Class be a unique Class, you have unlocked the Pioneer path!

Congratulations! For gaining your first Class, you have unlocked the Outsider path!

You may evolve your Status skill into the Outsiders Almanac skill!

Accept Evolution? Y/N

Done!

Calculating Rewards

Class Change!

None Outsider

You have completed the CharLimitCanttalkmuchNocluewhathappenedDidmybesttohelpyouli path!

You have made your way to an unfamiliar world. Ahead of you lay possibilities beyond imagining. Your unique perspective will be your greatest tool and greatest hindrance. Taking this Path first has opened many new destinations for you yet closed away many you would otherwise be able to reach.

Congratulations! For spending 120 Skill Points, you have unlocked the Trainee path!

Congratulations! For spending 60 Skill Points, you have unlocked the Beginner path!

Congratulations! For spending 12 Skill Points, you have unlocked the Novice path!

Edwin stared blankly at the wall of text. It was the most notifications he had ever gotten at a single time. Well, so long as he wasnt counting the pile of error messages he got when he woke up that first day, or when he beat the truck-sized Stonehide bear. Okay, maybe it wasnt the most notifications he had ever gotten, but it was still a lot for a seemingly simple action. It did seem as though his assessment for how to get a Class was correct, as well as the purpose of Skill Points. He got a total of five new Paths for completing one, though it didnt look like that would happen every time.

It was also interesting that the System seemed to be base 12. He had somewhat expected as much, what with his Paths being 60, 90, or 120 skill points across the board, but it was nice to have it mostly confirmed. Did it just translate to base 10 because those were the numbers he was used to?

Ewin was confused as to why there were apparently achievements for spending 12 and 60 skill points, when they would both be completed simply by the first Path one would take, but glancing at them on his Status showed they only needed twelve and thirty Skill Points, respectively, to complete. Were most Paths cheaper than what he had?

It does kind of make sense. If people have the System from birth, theyd probably get a lot more mundane accomplishments which I skipped by falling into the middle of the wilderness. I also got a lot of Paths, but maybe I didnt qualify for the cheaper ones, for whatever reason? I dont know.

Still, he had an immediate choice to make, and an eminently obvious answer to the question.

Outsiders Almanac

Become the guy who wrote the book

Record information regarding what you encounter

Increased limit per level.

And were back to super-cryptic skills. Cool.

Edwin called his Status back up, but didnt see any obvious changes to it, beyond a section at the bottom with his Completed Paths. Well, the skill said he could make record information about what he encountered. So, he looked at his hand.

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Outsiders Almanac, he thought at the appendage, similar to him trying to Identify it or call up his Status. There was no immediately obvious change, but he got a vague sense that his skill was asking for an input of some sort? What?

Edwin looked away, and then re-activated the skill on his hand. Oddly, there was no response beyond the same mental prompt as before, but this time he also felt a sensation as though the input would replace something. Weird. Um.

...Identify?

Outsider

What?

Wait, what? Did he Identify as an Outsider now? What was going on? He tried using the Almanac again, but this time, when the skill asked him for an input, he mentally provided, Testing

Identify

Outsider

Testing

Oh cool! He could leave notes for future-Edwin that would show up with Identify. Increased limit per level, though, did that mean he could only leave a limited number of notes, or that his notes were limited in size? He sat up in his bed and grabbed a nearby stick.

Outsiders Almanac. TestTestTest- the note was cut off suddenly, a distinct note of being full permeating the feedback.

Level Up!

Outsiders Almanac 12

He quickly Identified the stick

TestTestTest

Okay, twelve characters at level 1. Lets try this again? Outsiders Almanac. TestTestTestT-.

A quick check with Identify showed that there was an additional character on the message, as his limit now seemed to be 13 characters. Applying a new message, accompanied by another check showed that it did change when he re-used the Almanac, but the limit hadnt increased. Grabbing another stick, he Identified it, only to see the same message again.

So it ties the message to the stick in general? Hmm. What if I try to focus it on that branch specifically, instead of the branch as a concept?

A bit more experimentation showed that Edwin could indeed make the different sticks have separate messages, but doing so overrode the default note. So he could have a message pertaining to all branches, but if he set a message on a specific branch, that note wouldnt show up for other branches, but at the same time it wouldnt show his generic branch message.

Level Up!

Outsiders Almanac 23

His character limit didnt increase with this level, though he did discover that he could tag different parts of an object as separate from the whole. He could make each of his fingers have different labels, and they would show up if he Identified them, but it wouldnt interfere with a message he had for his entire hand.

Level Up!

Outsiders Almanac 35

Identify 67

Those levels increased his character limit all the way to 15, and Edwin discovered that while he could even give his individual finger segments their own note, he couldnt subdivide below that. Was it because he couldnt really conceptualize a discrete object for his skill to work on? He did have trouble Identifying a single gnat in a swarm, so it seemed like a workable hypothesis for the time being. Even with those restrictions, though, Edwin was ecstatic with his new Skill. He would never have to memorize something ever again! He could just make a note about it and refer to it later. Like writing on the back of your hand- he rubbed his arm guiltily- only with magic! That made it infinitely better. Time to experiment!

Level Up!

Outsiders Almanac 56

Hmm What was the formula which determined how many characters he could use? This was the first chance he had to peel back the literal mathematics of the universe, and hed be a poor excuse of a physicist if hed let this pass him by. Since he had 16 characters at level 6, then that meant... Hmm. He had 12 at level 1, 13 at levels 2 and 3, then increasing by one for levels 4-6. Maybe it was an increase of .7 characters per level? Hed need more data to be sure, and thats just if it were linear

Level Up!

Research 34

You have unlocked the Mathematics skill!

Accept skill? Y/N

He must have been close to unlocking Mathematics, if he only got it thinking about a linear progression and not when he was trying to add the modulus of the days hes spent on Joriah or anything like that. Still, he would gladly get magical assistance. He probably wasnt getting back to his calculator any time soon, after all and nope. Not thinking about that. Darn it. He was doing such a good job of not thinking about Earth until recently. Being in constant danger probably helped with that, admittedly. Still, he wasnt getting sidetracked yet. Uhhh accept skill!

Mathematics

Useful when counting sheep though not like that

Learn advanced calculations

Improved numerical sense per level.

Even though he really should have expected it at this point, it was still disappointing to get yet another skill with such a vague description. Then again, this one might actually be worthwhile, Edwin thought as he got up to tend to his fire and warm himself by it. Numerical sense might mean I get better at making estimations, can mentally handle larger and smaller numbers, or can keep track of extra digits beyond What was the human average again? Seven? It might be very useful.

Sadly, his new skill brought no sudden insights as to the scaling for his Almanac, but that was fine. He could figure it out himself eventually. That said, he disabled his level-up notifications and started applying notes to everything. The range for which he could apply his Almanac messages seemed to be linked to his Identify distance, interestingly, which also enabled him to sense that skill leveling as he could target things further and further away.

The general guideline for what he could or could not mark with his skill seemed to be directly tied to what he could conceptualize as a single object, so not half of a stick or the atmosphere. There were a few exceptions to this, however. He couldnt, for instance, leave a mark on the planet as a whole- doing so overlapped with him making a note for the mountain he was on- though that may have simply been due to him not being able to properly conceptualize the difference between the two. On the other side, he wasnt able to make a distinct note on arbitrary groups of objects, either. He could make a note for a specific leaf, or a type of leaf, or leaves in general, but he couldnt do so for two specific leaves next to each other, or two leaves in general. That then scaled back around, though, as he could make a pile of rocks have their own note, and disassembling the pile and building up a new pile, with some rocks exchanged, still returned the same marker. He could also put different generic messages for rocks instead of boulders.

Perhaps most interestingly, though, was he was able to focus on the material something was made of instead of the object itself. It followed the same rules for generic/specific as objects, but he was indeed able to make different tags for wood, not-maple, and not-cedar, and analyzing branches from the corresponding trees let him see either the message for a branch or the the message for their wood, depending on what he focused on. He couldnt make a message for not-cedar branches, though. It was either all not-cedar or all branches.

In this way, he was able to discover that the cliff and the giant boulder which made up his cave were different kinds of stone, though his geology wasnt good enough to determine what those types of stone were, and the miscellaneous rocks scattered around were mostly the same kind as the cliff, a few which matched the boulder, and a handful, including his broken knife, which came from neither.

As it turned out, Edwin was also able to mark smoke and fire, though only if the former was visible, but not a distinct cup of water (held in a concave rock), nor could he make separate notes for fire resulting from different types of wood being burned or different colors of flames. He could make a specific note for his campfire, though, and removing a burning stick showed he could mark that, though the mark vanished when he returned it to the greater campfire, and if he left it in long enough that the stick burned up, the note burned up as well.

Overall, a very productive day in his estimation. Sure, he hadnt found any other sources of food for when he inevitably ran out of chears, nor explored any to try and find a way out of the forest, or really did anything other than sit around and play with notifications. But it was a productive day of playing with notifications. He had so many skill levels now!

Level Up!

Outsiders Almanac 621

Identify 712

Visualization 1215

Research 47

Okay, so he may have gone a little overboard, and brought his Almanac back to being his highest-level skill, but he needed those levels if he was to complete more Paths, which would give him more rewards, probably skill upgrades, which could be very useful in surviving. Besides, who knows when it might be useful to have- he checked his current maximum- a character limit of 35 letters for his Almanac notes? That could save his life. You never knew. Anything was possible.

Perhaps more seriously, though, he should consider what Path he wanted to fill out in the future. While he could complete something like Novice or Beginner right away, what with his 39 Skill Points, he felt it might be better to use them on a longer Path, which would probably give better rewards, going purely on gut feeling. That would logically mean he should go for Realm Traveler, but was that too much to spend on a single path for right now? Hmm. He pulled up his Paths.

Paths

Skill Points: 39

Athlete 0/60

Beginner 0/30

Daredevil 0/60

Explorer 0/60

Linguist 0/60

Lumberjack 0/60

Micro-Biomancer 0/90

Novice 0/12

Outsider 0/60

Path Less Traveled 0/90

Physical Alchemist 0/90

Pioneer 0/60

Realm Traveler 0/120

Researcher 0/60

Stonehide Vanquisher 0/60

Survivor 0/60

Titan Slayer 0/90

Trainee 0/60

Trapper 0/60

Way of the Empty Hand 0/60

World Traveler 0/60

Athlete, Daredevil, Linguist, Pioneer, Researcher, Way of the Empty Hand, and World Traveler all sounded cool, and were 60 points, but he wasnt sure how well they might help him out now. Explorer, Lumberjack, Outsider, Stonehide Vanquisher, Survivor, and Trapper might help him now, but he also didnt want to specialize himself into surviving in the wilderness too much, which his Class changing as a result of his Path completing seemed to indicate. Though that concern only really applied to Lumberjack and maybe Survivor, the others sounded cool enough that he might want them eventually. Titan Slayer sounded super metal, Path Less Traveled was in a similar vein to his CharLim-whatever Path, and he absolutely wanted Physical Alchemist and Micro-Biomancer, but they were all 90 points, which seemed like a lot. He also wasnt doing Trainee. It was too generic in comparison to his other options. With a bit of focus, he rearranged his Paths so theyd be easier to parse

Paths

Skill Points: 39

Very Much Yes- Eventually

Physical Alchemist 0/90, Micro-Biomancer 0/90, Path Less Traveled 0/90, Realm Traveler 0/120

Promising

Stonehide Vanquisher 0/60, Titan Slayer 0/90, World Traveler 0/60, Researcher 0/60, Explorer 0/60, Outsider 0/60

Maybe One Day

Survivor 0/60, Linguist 0/60, Athlete 0/60, Daredevil 0/60, Pioneer 0/60

Meh

Lumberjack 0/60, Way of the Empty Hand 0/60, Trapper 0/60

No

Beginner 0/30, Novice 0/12, Trainee 0/60

He categorically dismissed the no Paths from considereation, not wanting to waste mental space debating them, but that still left him with more than a few options. After mulling it over for a while, he decided that while hed figure it out for sure in the morning at least, he was leaning towards the Explorer path- hopefully it could get him out of this mess. After loading up his campfire with the biggest piece of deadwood he could find, to hopefully give him something to work with in the morning, he retired for the evening.

Hopefully it wont rain, that would be annoying. Does feel a bit like it might be coming, though, Edwin mused as he shifted in his bed, then berated himself for even thinking something that might tempt fate. Fortunately, though, the real world didnt work like that. As he fell asleep, he almost believed it, too.

Level Up!

Sleeping 45