Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG

Chapter 12: Decisions

“What in the thirteenth layer of Hell were you thinking?!” The gruff voice shouted as a large man walked out of the main gates, my tired eyes only barely catching his armored outline in the dark night. Sensing that he was talking to me, I struggled to my feet, stumbling and shaking as my legs literally did not have the strength to hold me up.

The man walked up to where the woman and I were. She was much less tired, having only caught the end of the chase – and not having been lost in the woods for almost a week beforehand, presumably.

“I don’t know,” she breathed, hunched over and holding her knees for support. She pointed at me with her thumb. “I was just doing a plant-gathering job when that guy came running down the road with the Banestinger chasing him. No idea what he was doing in their territory. Wasn’t much time for Q&A.”

The man just scowled down at her, and then clanked over to me. He was tall and muscular, with a square face and a well-trimmed beard. He looked down at my gasping face as I continued to struggle to stand, and commanded in a too-loud voice, “Explain yourself!”

“I… I…” I gasped, “I… need to rest.”

And I collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

I awoke on a lumpy bed in a jail cell, and immediately panicked. Nofucking way was I going to get back to society and immediately be imprisoned. I sat up, struggling with the effort as my sore muscles screamed at me. The cell had strong stone walls that made me suspect I was underground, and iron bars on one side, through which I could see a narrow hallway that presumably connected my cell with a few others.

“Don’t worry, you ain’t stuck here.” A new voice drawled as I looked over through the jail cell’s bars to see a slovenly older man sitting in a chair by my cell. He reached over and swung the door right open. “Door’s unlocked, see? We jus’ needed to get you a place to sleep in, and this was all we had.”

“Oh.” I relaxed. “So, I can go whenever I want?”

“...Well, ya can’t leave before you talk to the captain – he’s got some questions for ya – but it’s not like we’re keepin’ you here forever.”

“Okay, I guess.” I lied back down. I definitely still couldn’t stand – or, at least, I really didn’t want to – so I’d take a few more minutes before I went. Until then…

Name:

Arlan Nota

Age:

20

Strength:

10

Class:

Minute Mage

Level:

3

Endurance:

14

Class Type:

Magic

XP:

18/200

Dexterity:

10

Health:

130/140

Health/Minute:

0.054

Conjuration:

17

Stamina:

15/72

Stamina/Minute:

0.456

Intelligence:

3

Mana:

172/185

Mana/Minute:

3.51

Stat Points:

3

Spells:

Talents:

Titles:

[Spell Choice Available]

Time Loop 3

Trailblazer

Noxious Grasp 5 - XP 9/45

I smiled as I looked at my Status. I had a Spell Choice! If I got one at Level 0, and then another at Level 3. So, assuming it was a linear progression, I’d get another at 6, another at 9, etc. It was finally nice to have some knowledge of what I’d be getting and when!

I mentally sighed, thinking about the wealth of information that all of the other Classes had on them. Not only could you find when any other Class would get their Spells, you could also find what Spells they would get. Pretty much every Class’s first few Spell choices were very well-documented.

Now, the later Levels were much harder to document, so as you got stronger, most people would find they’d have to forge their own path. That wasn’t only because there were fewer people at higher Levels to document the choices, though. The way Spell Choices worked was that every Spell Choice was dependent on the Spells you’d chosen previously. So, since I chose Noxious Grasp during my first choice, I’d get a certain set of three Spells to choose from now. However, if I’d chosen, say, Firebolt, I would be offered a completely different set of three Spells at this Level.

And every layer of Spell Choices was like this, depending on every Spell Choice in the past. So, for example, Wizards got a Spell Choice every Level. To document every single Spell offered to Wizards up to Level 5, it would take three to the power of five people choosing all of the different ‘branches’ they could walk down on the ‘Spell tree’ of different choices, which was 243 people. However, to document all of the Spells offered to Wizards up to Level 10, which was twice as far along, it wouldn’t be twice that number of people. Instead, since it was an exponential growth equation, it would be three to the power of ten people, or 59,049.

So, of course, Wizards had not yet been reliably documented up to that point. Now, there were certain paths up the Spell tree that were documented even past Level 20, but those were single branches written about by individual people, not the entire tree of choices. Also, Wizards were the most extreme example; since they got Spells more often than any other Class, their Spell tree was much more dense with choices, and grew much faster. Sorcerers only got Spells every ten Levels, so their Spell Choices were incredibly well-documented.

Anyway, I just really wished I could have some more info on my Class and what I’d be offered in the future so I could actually, y’know, plan ahead. I looked at my Trailblazer Title’s description.

Trailblazer

You are the only person in the world with your Class, and as such, cannot rely on the findings of others to make your decisions. Instead, you must forge your own path.

If you do not already have it, you gain access to the Intelligence Stat. It will improve the information given to you by the System regarding your Class and what might become of it in the future.

Whenever you Level up, gain 1 Intelligence.

Well, I was gaining that 1 Intelligence per Level, which was giving me some Mana and Mana/Minute at the very least, but I still hadn’t been given any of that information. I guessed I was still relatively low on Intelligence, so it made sense I wasn’t seeing too much benefit.

Well, whatever. I was doing just fine without it. Besides, it was time to take a look at the Spells being offered to me!

Choose one Spell to learn:

Corpse Explosion

School: Curse, Necromancy

Type: Activated

Cost: 50 Mana

—

Choose a living being within 30 paces of you. For the next 1 minute, it cannot regenerate Health naturally or magically. If it dies during this time, its body detonates, dealing up to 200 damage, depending on how close they are to the source of the explosion, to all beings within 15 paces of the body.

Crippling Chill

School: Cold, Curse

Type: Activated

Cost: 45 Mana

—

Choose a being within 40 paces of you. It becomes coated in frost for the next 15 seconds. For as long as it is coated in frost, it loses 5 Health and 4 Stamina each second, and its Dexterity score is lowered by 10.

Revitalize

School: Divine

Type: Activated

Cost: 85 Mana

—

Choose yourself or another being you are physically touching. Restore 10 of the chosen being’s Health and 20 of its Stamina.

Hm. Corpse Explosion seemed absolutely phenomenal to use when fighting a large group of weaker enemies, essentially making it so that killing one of them would kill the rest in a large area, but it had a huge drawback, especially for me.

I needed to be touching an enemy to kill it with Noxious Grasp, and there was nothing written on that Spell that said I wouldn’t be taking that damage, too. So I essentially wouldn’t be able to use the Spell when fighting alone. I may have considered taking it if I knew what my next choice of Spells would be after I took Corpse Explosion – if I was going to be offered a good ranged option soon, then it might be worth it just taking it now so I could benefit from it later – but I had no idea what I’d be offered later. So I probably wasn’t going to be taking that one.

I liked Crippling Chill a lot, though. Forty paces was a long distance, and the fact that it also drained Stamina meant it would work well with Noxious Grasp – the less Stamina an enemy had, the more devastating it was for them to lose even more of it. I also liked the Dexterity debuff, for two different reasons. One was that it would have helped a ton in the situation I was just in – being chased by a monster much more powerful than me. If I could use Crippling Chill at a range to cut its Stats and drain its Stamina, then it wouldn’t be able to chase after me as well, and I could either get away or it would give up.

The second reason I liked the Dexterity debuff was that it would work alongside Noxious Grasp to immobilize the enemy. If a monster had less Dexterity, then it would also obviously move more sluggishly and be less able to reach me as I tried to kill it with Noxious Grasp. It would overall make all of my fights a lot safer and keep me alive while killing the enemy quickly.

The main downside was the cost and damage. 5 damage per second over 15 seconds was only 75 damage, and for 45 Mana, that was a horrible rate. At its current Rank, 45 Mana worth of Noxious Grasp would deal close to 200 damage, and it would deal that damage in only 13 seconds. Even if I were to compare Crippling Chill to a Rank 0 Noxious Grasp, that amount of Mana would be worth 150 damage over 15 seconds, which was still way more than Crippling Chill.

That said, though, my Mana reserves were getting pretty high. Even if Crippling Chill cost a lot for its effect, I could still manage that, as long as I wasn’t trying to cast Crippling Chill on a bunch of different targets. I normally didn’t totally empty my Mana over the course of a fight anymore, so I could just think of it as using that spare Mana on the safety offered by Crippling Chill.

And speaking of safety, Revitalize offered quite a bit. Instant healing effects normally weren’t seen very often; the most common healing Spell – Healing Hands – took ten full seconds to activate its effects. So I could definitely see the value of taking Revitalize here. If I took it, I’d be one of few people who had a healing Spell useful in live combat situations, and my services would be pretty in-demand.

Healers were always wanted, and people would pay a hefty sum to get my aid if I had a Spell like this. It would also help me in battle, of course, keeping me alive if I was close to dying, and also restoring my Stamina if I ever got too tired.

But the main benefit would be that if I took this Spell, it could set me up for life, financially. People would actively pay me to just tag along during jobs, contribute nothing to battle, and then heal them up after they were done fighting.

Objectively speaking, Revitalize was the correct choice here.

But…

I just didn’t like it. Revitalize would offer me money, but cripple my actual power. If I’d learned anything from my experience in the forest, it was that I needed to be stronger. Sure, I didn’t expect to get lost in there again any time soon, but I never knew what could happen. Any job I took could leave me stranded in the same way I was before – the fate of my parents was proof enough of that.

It could help me heal faster, sure, but time could also heal me. Most adventuring parties operated on the motto of 'only one significant fight per outing,' and for a good reason. Going into combat drained, whether it was on Health, Stamina, or Mana, would only lead to death. So generally, if you got into a fight that left you hurt, you'd just go back to town and hole up until the next time you could fight at peak capacity. Job be damned. And I fully intended to abide by that logic.

So, really, the only time I'd need to fully heal in one day instead of two would be if I were lost in the woods again. And I knew damn well I'd fight through the hells to keep that from happening again. At the end of the day, if I wanted to keep myself safe from the woods, the answer wouldn't be to help keep myself comfortable while I was in them. The answer would be to keep myself from getting lost there in the first place. And to keep myself from getting stranded, I'd need to fight off monsters that could leave me alone.

In live combat, Revitalize was too expensive to actually be useful. The only time it could be useful would be after a battle, to heal someone up. And, at the end of the day, if I just prevented that damage from being dealt to me in the first place, I'd be in a much better spot.

I wanted to be able to fight, killing monsters in the thrill of battle. Not sit around watching other people protect me. Revitalize was too costly for too little effect, especially when compared to Crippling Chill. Its primary role was to help others. And, not to sound selfish, but that wasn’t my thing. I absolutely wanted to help people – being a hero was one of the biggest draws of adventuring – but not in that way. I couldn’t rely on someone else to take care of me. Ever.

Okay. That settled it.

You have learned the Spell Crippling Chill.

I smiled. My second Spell! I finally had options! And speaking of options, I had one more choice to manage – Stat Points.

I considered doing Endurance this time – or at least a mix of Endurance and Conjuration. Now that I was finally out of the deadly wilderness, I didn’t have to worry as much about fighting monsters way above my own Level. However, for that exact reason, Endurance also wasn’t as important. Suddenly, I wasn’t fighting for my life anymore. Of course, I still needed to be as strong as I could be, but I could afford to play the long game now.

And the long game said ‘more Conjuration.’ The more Conjuration I had, the more Mana/Minute I’d have, and thus the more Spell XP I’d get. Conjuration was always good to have more of, whereas Endurance was only good if I got into a fight I could die in. Which, ideally, would never happen again.

So I stuck with the usual.

You have used 3 Stat Points to increase Conjuration.

Your Conjuration value is now 20.

I grinned. 20 Conjuration was a lot – it was double what any Unclassed person would have in their physical stats. In fact, speaking of the fact that Unclassed people had 10 in everything, Crippling Chill took away 10 Dexterity. Did that mean that if I used it on an Unclassed person, they’d go totally immobile for fifteen seconds? Obviously, I never wanted to use it on a Human being, but… wow. It just put everything in perspective. I could just paralyze people at will now.

I mean, it would take about eight seconds to kill someone with the Unclassed standard of 100 Health using Noxious Grasp, so, barring interference, I had a one-hundred-percent guaranteed method of killing someone who didn’t have a Class. That was… a bit scary, honestly. I mean, my own method would even work on me. I also only had 10 Dexterity, and my now-140 Health still wouldn’t be enough to survive fifteen sustained seconds of Noxious Grasp’s damaging effect.

Well, hopefully I’d never have to fight another Human, anyway. And I knew I was the only person around with Minute Mage, so I wouldn’t go up against anyone with this specific set of Spells, anyway.

I went ahead and checked my Status, post-changes.

Name:

Arlan Nota

Age:

20

Strength:

10

Class:

Minute Mage

Level:

3

Endurance:

14

Class Type:

Magic

XP:

18/200

Dexterity:

10

Health:

130/140

Health/Minute:

0.054

Conjuration:

20

Stamina:

18/72

Stamina/Minute:

0.456

Intelligence:

3

Mana:

186/215

Mana/Minute:

4.05

Spells:

Talents:

Titles:

Crippling Chill - XP 0/10

Time Loop 3

Trailblazer

Noxious Grasp 5 - XP 9/45

At 4.05 Mana/Minute, I was officially making more Mana per minute than Noxious Grasp cost to cast per second, which felt nice. That meant I could cast a second of it every sixty seconds when practicing! I was also excited to start Ranking up Crippling Chill – I’d almost forgotten that I was doing something weird by pushing Noxious Grasp so far past the Soft Cap. At Level 3, my cap was at Rank 2, so I'd be able to get two full Ranks in Crippling Chill without having to worry about it! In fact…

I pushed Mana into Crippling Chill, deliberately choosing to target it at nothing in particular. It felt incredibly strange to cast a different Spell after focusing on Noxious Grasp for so long, and I could tell I’d need quite a bit of practice with this one, too, before I got to the level of proficiency with it that I had with Noxious Grasp. After a few seconds of mentally feeling around and getting a sense for it, I finished casting the Spell.

Threshold reached. Crippling Chill XP has reached 10.

Crippling Chill Rank has increased to 1.

Due to Crippling Chill Rank reaching 1, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 45 to 46.1

Health Drain: From 5 to 5.25

Stamina Drain: From 4 to 4.20

Dexterity Debuff: From 10 to 10.5

Threshold reached. Crippling Chill XP has reached 11.

Crippling Chill Rank has increased to 2.

Due to Crippling Chill Rank reaching 2, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 46.1 to 47.3

Health Drain: From 5.25 to 5.51

Stamina Drain: From 4.20 to 4.41

Dexterity Debuff: From 10.5 to 11

Due to Crippling Chill Rank increasing to Rank 2, Crippling Chill has reached a Soft Cap.

Spell XP gain for Crippling Chill is 50 times slower until your Level increases past the Soft Cap.

Increase your Level to 4 to increase your Soft Cap.

“Haha!” I laughed aloud. In a single cast, the Spell already Ranked up twice! It cost 45 Mana to cast, and before hitting the Soft Cap, I’d get 1 XP per 2 Mana spent. Since the first two Ranks needed a combined 21 XP to reach, that meant I’d need to spend 42 Mana, which was less than the 45 Mana required for a single cast of the Spell.

Completely ridiculous… I shook my head and smiled.

“What’re you laughing about?” The older man frowned and looked at me.

“Nothing, nothing,” I sighed. “It’s just… I remembered how easy it’s supposed to be.”

He gave me a weird look for a moment, but eventually just shrugged and looked away.

I looked up at the ceiling. I’d rest a bit more before going to try and clear things up with this ‘captain’ guy. Hopefully it’d all turn out well.