A Plant's Life 61 John's Stats

John observed: "The system is truly discriminating between its subject, but that is the proper management and the way I can use most! More information is shown, but it is still not connected enough to the soul to be able to read more. It is understandable to have the element of reading minds built into the mainframe, but with this many subjects, it can be very time consuming and unnecessary to monitor each one. However, tricking a strong handful to lower their guards willingly is rather smart. I am starting to like this game more and more. Now for the final and most important gain..."

[Name: John

Race: NA

Level: 25

Area of influence: 132 / 132 (Mind*5 + Spirit + 2)

PP (Processing Power): 300 / 390 (Mind*10 + spirit*3 + 100)

SP (Soul Power): 250 / 300 (Spirit*10)

Attributes:

Spirit – 30

Luck – 15

Mind – 20

Skills:

Energy Manipulation (Advance): Bend the surrounding energy to the user's will, they cannot be under the control of a being with higher Spirit; costs 5 pp per sec.

Energy Devour (Expert): Intake any energy with medium wavelength within the area of influence, the amount under control cannot exceed SP and PP; costs 1 pp per sec.

Mind Control (Apprentice): Read and affect minds of weaker targets within the area of influence; costs 10 pp per sec.

EL (Energy Level): 800,000 / 100,000]

John viewed his status window with much interest:

"From the start, the NA for the race is understandable since I truly do not belong in this world so I cannot be categorized under these standards. Furthermore, my stats are much fewer as I do not need to know attributes such as strength or const.i.tution as they are not relevant for now. Once I develop my permanent form I can derive those parts as well. My area of influence can truly a.s.sist in dire times, by enabling me to find danger and also feast from afar!

Amongst all the values found the processing power was the easiest to find, as I fully understood the brain structure of all my test subjects. However, soul power was difficult to derive since the concept was new. The method to quantify my power was based on basic creatures, thus, after I pa.s.s a certain threshold, I will need stronger lab rats to conclude better research.

I have included the luck factor as well since I found myself entangled with destiny; my appearance here at this time is too much of coincidence otherwise. Alas, I can feel the power of fate within myself, but I am still too insignificant to extract information from it. Soon, I will completely dissect it and find the source for further investigation!"

John pondered over his skills, concluding:

"My strongest skill is energy devouring which I have dubbed expert following the structure of the dungeon's system. With it, I can extract force within my field to use as I please. However, understandably I am unable to take those belonging to beings with higher spiritual power, even if I could the volume and quality would undoubtedly crush me like a small twig. It is best for one to know their limits if they do not want it to be shown to them!

After that energy manipulation comes next, which I have quantified as part of the area of influence. In order to find out how much of my limit of the area is being used at the time. It is important to be very cautious; if I can feel others with strength above mine, they can be expected to find me as well. So, it is very important to learn strict control over my domain.

And at last, the power to read and control minds with limited deficiency. It is very costly to use this procedure and the results are not guaranteed. The mind is quite fascinating, each creature possesses its own structure and logical path, which makes them unique in this manner. I would love to crack every skull I see and experiment every aspect of them, I am sure my mind control ability would experience huge benefits"

If any bystanders could hear the last sentence John concluded, they would escape with all their might. Since this grim sentence was reached very naturally, showing the lack of any respect for other's life!

John had used a considerable amount of soul and processing power to derive the last steps of his status window. Thus he did not wish to conduct experiments before his mount was stabilized.

After checking the structure of his own strength, he scanned the feeble traces of destiny on the ogre, attempting to locate the origin of it.

"Since the subject has exhausted his fate, it shows he had been extremely close to completing his purpose, which can be easily understood. Once too many casualties occur in lower levels and protected areas, some force will arrive, acting as reinforcements. However, due to the delicate balance within the dungeon, monsters with excess power are pinned within their layer. That leaves raising few seedlings to stop the damage, making the mainframe the culprit behind the scenes. Furthermore, the structure of fate on the body of this ogre is similar to the hobgoblin killed by the adventurer group, and it has visible differences from Betsy's energy"

Raising new talents was a costly process, but order had to be saved, otherwise the damages done would disrupt the flow of energy; such matter could leave lasting damages all around the structure of the dungeon. However, all of the system's hard work and investment were foiled by John, who had taken a liking to this new mount!

Once the group had triggered their devastating attack the excess unstable energy had rushed towards their foe, then, under John's manipulation it reached the beast's brain. Where a small explosion occurred, cutting the ties between the mana symbol and mainframe, the last message the mark had sent was the explosion, then it had gone offline. In the records of system, the host had his brain fried, thus the a.s.set would be counted as discarded, rather than possessed, since the adventurers were sighted in the field, an investigation would put them at centre. Considering their decomposed bodies, the search could last for quite some time before they learn of the mistake; yet it would be late as the main culprit would have run far.

After forcefully severing such a delicate connection, the state of ogre was almost brain dead, thus John had moved the remaining three hosts in a magical formation, boosting his a.s.sault. Then he devoured every ounce of vitality from them and jumped ships; moving to a more stable vessel! He then used some of the retained force to block the auto repair of the symbol as it desperately tried to communicate with the system, notifying the status of its host. John carefully cut the mark with the precision of a master. However, he did not mind the damages done to the soul, as it had lost most of its research value due to the interference of destiny.

He did not possess enough strength to meddle in such dangerous fields yet; otherwise, his ending would not be any better than these broken p.a.w.ns. How would an investor not attempt to control their losses? It was only natural if any residue of the poor souls who had been touched by the golden light and then defeated, to be crushed in order to replenish the lost resources.

John dissected the symbol with the enthusiasm of a child who has found a new shiny toy; breaking every component, then rea.s.semble it over and over; with his new abilities, doing such feat was rather easy. He then focused on upgrading his core, strengthening the foundation, also to experiment on the margin of power attainment; trying to find the return on each upgrade with different purity of mana or lifeforce.

John a.n.a.lyzed:

"First, I need to improve my core functionality using least pure mana, then pure lifeforce and at last the highest mana found in the symbols. I have an abundant inventory of each kind, sufficient for two upgrades per method. In order to reach the best results, such an experiment cannot be deemed as finished, rather each new energy has to be meticulously studied. There is also a possibility of corruption from exposure to any of these elements, one needs to be careful while dealing with the matters of the supernatural. It is time to get started, while I am improving myself this new lab rat will have some time to shake off the effects of my strong spell"

Without further ado, John began his experimentation.