Chương 9: A Reflection on Levels

Having to Still and Silent Spell everything meant adding two Valence Levels, which severely restricted most spells that I could Cast. The Dimension Door from our escape was one of the very few IV's I could actually get off. I needed five hundred rep counts with each Meta to become Efficient with them and reduce them to +0. That was going to take nothing but time, and since every spell I was Casting used them, it would progress fairly quick.

My mother had very little knowledge of magic, or she likely would have been quite frightened by the power and skill of my spellcasting. A child should not know IV and V's, and definitely a male one should have found such things impossible. Of course, I was going to change the world, so it was perfectly appropriate for me! Limited to Four in Class Levels. What an effective and crippling restriction, I thought, not for the first time.

I had realized the fact while still in the womb, as my schemas to plan out my advancement in Assay had utterly failed. I simply couldn't take a Class Level above Four. That was a horrible feeling. Being limited to a Four when I knew the powers and was technically able to wield them with skill and experience would be horrible. Certainly I wouldn't be of any long-term use or relevance as a Four in a land where women hostile to men occupied all the higher Levels. I'd be a stepping-stone.

Naturally, there was an alternative, and I silently prayed thanks to Soulshard Einz that she had found out about the Racial Levels. This strange restriction of Class Levels, doubtlessly put into place by the extant goddesses to blatantly favor women, had no effect on the older and more primal advancement path of generic Racial Class Levels! And so that's how everything I was doing was based and running on. On the other hand, I had a remarkable and useful little benefit for this, because I was Halvyr.

I could take Elven and Human Racial Levels, the ones normal Classers qualified for, at least up to /3. Extra skill points, extra Levels, Masteries, extra everything to apply the Karma I was made of to. More importantly, more ways to game the unfair System! I was restricted to three Classes, an old paradigm that limited non-humans… BUT, I could potentially take them concurrently, instead of one after another. True 'multi-Classing'. Not that I was going to do so, because that wouldn't bork abuse the System enough.

Humans weren't so limited, but they had to have the Stats to gain a second Class… a 17 in the primary Stat of the new Class! It was an extreme limitation to going Wide… and it very, very specifically favored Amazons, who had 18's in all their Stats. Blatant favoritism, crippling to those who liked going Wide instead of High… and since Wide was the only way for men to gain power, it shafted them even further as women monopolized the Heights. Well thought out.

Four was actually quite skilled and tough at the mundane level, the equivalent of the most experienced troops in a medieval army. Functional and skilled, just not extraordinary… and certainly not going to be leading those who could get much higher in Level. Doomed to mundanity. Well, following the ancient Racial Advancement paradigm threw all those restrictions to the System out on its ear.

The Wide restrictions still sucked, as I was limited to triple-Classing as a half-elf, a halvyr, but at least I could get my Height. I was thus already a Halvyr/10, because I didn't have a lot of places to fill with my Karma. In comparison to the Power of Ten, filling in the four Class Levels maximum in the three tranches I was allowed here was distressingly fast and simple, and I'd completed what I'd dared to a while ago.

I could probably be a Halvyr/11 anytime I wanted to be, but I was wary of breaking Ten as an infant! The restrictions on Width were almost crippling when comparing myself to Aelryinth, the progenitor of my soul. Yes, I could go Deeper than most of the natives of this world were used to, especially since the base System here was fundamentally Aruan, which the Power of Ten was meant to work under. Fewer Classes meant fewer Masteries and Feats could be picked up easily.

The only way to acquire those was the slow and laborious way, i. e. study, research, and practice, practice, practice, probably requiring gold, and definitely requiring time! 22 Levels, 66 Masteries, 22 Paid Feats, plus 5 Feats from Levels … it was so, so easy to fill up my Depth, and my base Levels this time didn't offer a lot of bonuses, as I had to focus so much on my Spellcasting to keep it up to par. The Halvyr Racial Class only allowed spellcasting advancement at + 2/3 Levels.

That was fairly normal for a Racial Class, sure, but it was crippling on an overall basis. 2/3 advancement meant lower Casting power, spell penetration, spells capacity, spells accessible, the whole works. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. The side Class Levels were supposed to address that weakness. Even if they were only one for every three Racial Levels, that would have worked, providing more versatility and power.

But no, restricted to four Levels max straight off. Just, UGH! I hit the cap of Four at Ten Racial, and that was that… Which was a huge reason I was taking my Tranches of 4 Class Levels one after another, instead of concurrently, heh heh! Min/maxing was a lot harder to do when your choices were not unlimited and your spread was not so large. It felt like someone was trying to stuff me inside a single 20-level Class and restrict my power and functions that way. I grit my gums, since I didn't have teeth yet.

There were ways around certain of the restrictions. The Halvyr Class skipping Caster Levels could actually be bought off with a Feat… and Feats could be trained, so I literally could refine my spellcasting to full progression. Only possible if you were a Servant of Heaven. And I was, and even had the active Pact to prove it. More Masteries spent to secure the Wrath. Just, ugh.

Furthermore, it was plain I couldn't trust the local spellcasting institutions, as they'd all be dominated by women and likely be threatened by any male with advanced spellcasting power. So I wouldn't be getting any kind of life support from anyone but my mother. I was the support others would need to correct this problem. And what a problem it was!

By everything I'd heard and learned talking with Mother, not a single male deity was extant in the world anymore, nor any of Heaven, who would naturally be opposed to such a division. Eryl was dominant as the sole acting Greater God, since Voyd seemed hampered or crippled… a wise choice, as she'd certainly turn against the others and try to destroy a world without a Heaven able to act there to oppose it.

So, the reason I was here, if that Sending from Aelryinth was true, was because Mithar wanted me to do something here. Maybe Sylune. Whatever, it wasn't too hard to figure out what. I was going to figure out how the gods were locked away, undo it, reverse the cap on male limits, and basically restore universal order to what it was before. No pressure. No idea where to go, how to proceed, and no Divine help whatsoever backing me up.

If I attracted Divine attention, there was every chance I'd just be annihilated on the spot, too, with no other gods around to forestall such actions. Meaning I needed an Astral Ward at VIII+1 at all speed, and if I didn't have it, I needed to stay very, very much under the radar of the Divine. This all was going to suck. It was going to suck bad. The Neutral goddesses didn't have a lot of positive things going for them, especially Eryl with her Amazon-dominant personality. The Evil goddesses it was just a given.

So, I had to get to Fifteen. Without attracting attention. Probably while still a toddler. Having a loving mother was going to really help. Tiya wasn't the brightest, but she was fiercely loyal to family, she had taken me into her heart, not aborted me, and I was going to stand with her to the end. By the time I was done with her, she was going to be frightening Amazons and beating on anything that could threaten her and I, and that was going to be pretty good for both of us.

Not so much for the entrenched powers that be, at least when we got there. Mom had absolutely no love of this Amazon-led empire I was in that was going out a-conquering and chewing up its people in pointless land battles for glory and little else, all the while what seemed to be a constant pressure of undead was coming in from the north. Which was probably a sign.

If the dead really couldn't pass on with Skulos and Harse out of the game, then the world was doomed by its own dead, and could the goddesses even roll back their own changes? I was pretty certain a lot of champions, women and men, had gone trying to find a way to bring all the gods back. It only made sense that some would try, seeing the disaster coming, the way Heaven was explicitly barred and kept away, then accused of running away to change the narrative.

I was going to have to go where others didn't, and find out what they hadn't. But first, I had to live long enough for that to happen. Mother was creeping through the darkness right now, eager to kill these men who thought they could kill her. Without my magic, sure, we would have had to go off the road, somehow sneak up on the men, and it would have been REALLY risky. Mom was basically a Four herself… a very good female soldier and warrior, but hardly superhuman.

Just one of the most skilled normal fighters around, and despite being in good shape, still weaker than a strong man. With my Buffs on her, she could fight way above her weight, which was important. The problem was that with a 16 Strength and 17 Con, she had no room to satisfy the human requirements and go Wide with another Class. Her Dexterity was only 14, her Wisdom 13, Charisma 12, and Intellect a very average 10. So, she was limited to being a Melee Fighter or Berzerker at this point.

One-tranche advancement, limiting strength and power and what mortals could achieve. Just, ugh. I was keeping easy track of her in the Eyes of Heaven, drifting alongside Clopper on my Disk. We were heading back into the hills along hunting trails, but it didn't look to be too awful far, as they'd want to stay close enough to the town and to the trade roads, both their victims and places to sell alike. I was expecting old ruins, a cave, or maybe a hold in the hills built in old ruins covered by vegetation.

Given a magical universe and that these were servants of Shoul, a cave complex was most likely, since they weren't heading into a city. In a city, they'd be members of a thieves' guild or mafia, with the Shoul priests at or near the top of power, if they could do it. Out here… rep and lethality would do the job, and no woman was going to be serving a male god, so I wasn't going to have to worry about high Levels, only not knowing the ground and any traps laying about.

Traps I could deal with, as well as knowing the ground. Sorcery was my prime area of advance, and I was taking some substandard choices just for survivability, knowing I could cover them with Ur-Priest advances, and some later Wizardry choices. My only problem now was that I had no spellbook, no spells to fill it, and so my working Wizard Levels right now were basically filled with cross-Theurgic spells in my Prepared Slots, no actual Wizardry spells at all.

Wizardry was spending one Exemplar Surge a day on Extra Spell Known, grabbing me what I wanted when I needed it… and hoping that was all I'd need for the day. Then I deposited the spell carefully into an empty Wizard Slot, and didn't Cast it, relying on my Sorcery instead. Still, I was already a Ten, and in Sorcery. I had a lot of Casting Slots.

And I'd been taking Arcane Theurge Casting in my Halvyr Class since I was a Four and my Racial Class Levels in Human and Elf added to my own to create three Wizard Caster Levels. It meant I could Cast Wizard Spells with my Sorcery Slots!