In the world outside the screen it was four in the morning, the hour when streets forget their names and rooms begin to resemble cells. Inside, the cave mouth drew a thin grey that had nothing to do with mercy. "Now it begins to be interesting," he thought, and went to work.
He dressed at the threshold, the stone at his back, the scent of night still wet on the air. The points fell where he always laid them, not by superstition but by a habit that behaved like one.
Emperor — Lvl 8
INT 12 · WIS 11 · STR 8 · PER 9 (DEX 1 · CON 1 · STA 1 · WIL 3 · CHA 1 · PRV 4)
HP: 85
IP: 103
Breath: 41
Justice Points (JP): 10
Skill Points: 1 (held)
"A fair road for a sage who prefers not to die," he measured. "Not orthodox, not univocal. A soldier would fatten Constitution and Dexterity; I've let Strength climb enough to be impolite. Call it what other worlds called it—battle-mage—but without the romance."
He kept the rest as silent as an oath. Pieces acquired in secrecy ought to be equipped in secrecy; no audience, no names, no set for gossip to bind him by. He fitted the mask beneath the hood and let the habit drink his silhouette; the gloves bit and remembered their quarry; the undershirt held its strange warmth as if silk could keep a pulse; the greaves hummed like modest anvils at his shins. He palmed the staff to his right—the Vein of Sylvie—and let the left make its peace with steel. He left the trousers folded away for now; he left the bracers sleeping in their cloth—Sabine's dye would make a church out of that black, and churches are for the hour appointed.
[Equipped: Mathis Mask (1x) — Uncommon — L7]
[Equipped: Ferocious Gloves — Reinforced Pelt — Uncommon — Medium — L5]
[Equipped: Balin's Crimson Undershirt — Silk and Sylvie Blood — Uncommon — L5]
[Equipped: Vein of Sylvie — Very Rare — L5] — Right hand
[Equipped: Common Shortsword — Steel — L1] — Left hand
[Equipped: Boarhide Greaves — Common — L4]
[Equipped: Boarhide Trousers — Common — L4]
[Equipped: Cloak of the Widow Wolf — Uncommon — L8]
[Equipped: Twin Maw Pauldrons — Uncommon — L5]
[Equipped: Mysterious Habit (1x) — Reinforced Pelt — Uncommon — Medium — L7]
"Goodbye, old kit," he said, not unkind, and let the pieces fall from him like husks.
[Unequipped: Sturdy Trousers — Common Cloth — L1] - Stored
[Unequipped: Poor Vest — Cloth — L1] - Stored
[Unequipped: Worn Sandals — Poor Leather — L1] - Stored
He tightened the last buckle and took stock. "Missing a few rings," he said. "Maybe a circlet over the mask. A belt. An amulet or a collar. A couple of relics." He let the cave weigh the silence. "For a beginner, the set is complete enough. Now—down to it. What are the numbers on each piece?"
Mathis Mask — Ivory & Bone(Head — Bone)
Grade: Uncommon
Item Level 7
Armor: 58
+4 WIL
+2 WIS
+25 HP
Durability: 45 / 45
Special: Tusks over skull plating grant +10% resistance vs. Cutting/Piercing, but -5% resistance vs. Blunt. Aura of death — enemies within 5m have -35% morale (most effective on humans).
"I have a use for you later—well hidden…"
Ferocious Gloves — Reinforced Wolf Pelt
(Hands — Leather/Fist Weapon Hybrid)
Grade: Uncommon
Item Level 5
Armor: 42
+5 STR
+3 DEX
+20 HP
Durability: 40 / 40
Weapon Effect: Unarmed strikes deal 3–6 bonus damage.
On hit: 10% chance to apply Bleed (2 dmg/turn for 5s).
"When steel fails, the hands will remember."
Balin's Crimson Undershirt — Silk and Sylvie Blood
(Chest — Cloth)
Grade: Uncommon
Item Level 5
+6 INT
+4 WIS
+30 HP
+2 IP per Level Up
+15% Intellectual Attack Damage
+15% Resistance vs. Intellectual Attacks
Durability: 35 / 35
"Blood that thinks—and does not forget."
Vein of Sylvie — Crystal Staff(Right Hand — 1H Staff)
Grade: Very Rare
Item Level 5
Damage: 24–32 (Intellectual)
DPS: ~10.0
+12 INT
+8 WIS
+50 IP
Durability: 60 / 60
Special:
+15% to all Elemental Attacks
+15% to all Occultist Attacks
Sylvie-Nature: Secret.
"My greatest relic. My doorway into my cousins' realm. Thank you very much, Balin, you idiot."
Common Shortsword — Steel(Left Hand — 1H Sword)
Grade: Common
Item Level 1
Damage: 5–8 (Cut/Pierce) — Speed 2.0
DPS: ~3.3
+2 STR
Durability: 30 / 30
"Obvious enough to be despised. Sinister will do the rest."
Boarhide Greaves (Feet — Hide)
Grade: Common
Item Level 4
Armor: 34
+3 STA
+15 HP
Durability: 35 / 35
Special:+10% resistance vs. Blunt damage
"Stones and clubs strike low first. Let them."
Boarhide Trousers (Legs — Hide)
Grade: Common
Item Level 4
Armor: 34
+3 CON
+15 HP
Durability: 35 / 35
Special:+10% resistance vs. Blunt damage
"Weight in the legs, lungs guarded. It will do."
Cloak of the Widow Wolf(Back — Hide/Leather)
Grade: Uncommon
Item Level 8
Armor: 44
+4 PER
+2 WIL
Durability: 40 / 40
Requires Level 8
Special:Aura of intimidation — enemies within 5m have -15% morale.
"The scent of man revolts me. Let fear arrive before I do."
Twin Maw Pauldrons(Shoulder — Wolfhide/Leather)
Grade: Uncommon
Item Level 5
Armor: 38
+4 STR
+2 CON
Durability: 38 / 38
Special: Each pauldron is mounted with a wolf's head. Fear Factor +15% — enemies have a small chance to hesitate before striking.
"Two muzzles to open a path where words won't enter."
Mysterious Habit — Reinforced Pelt (Reversible)
Grade: Uncommon
Item Level 7
Chest — Medium Armor
Armor: 55
+4 WIS
+4 INT
+2 STA
+2 CON
+40 HP
Durability: 60 / 60
Requires Level 7
Special:
+2 JP per Level Up
+2 IP per Level Up
+10% resistance vs. Slashing
+5% resistance vs. Sacred
+5% resistance vs. Intellectual
"Background engine—prayer and reason ticking without pause. Good. Keep it."
Nameless, who until now had been hampered by poor initial equipment, rejoices at his attributes being buffed by his panoply. "Now we're talking, evolution…" Some time later, "It is necessary to take advantage of the fact that most players have not yet managed to craft or obtain anything special and advance like never before", at least, it is what he expects from a world with a Level 4 champion player.
Emperor (Lvl 8, Half-Gear)
"Half-gear, but whole enough for work," he thought.
Attributes with gear:
INT 34 · WIS 29 · STR 19 · PER 13 · DEX 4 · CON 8 · STA 6 · WIL 9 · CHA 1 · PRV 4
Status:
HP: 230 IP: 169 Breath: 74 Justice Points: 10 Skill Points: 1 (held) Armor Total: 323
He let the cave see his grin and no one else. "Most of them have nothing," he said. "Rags and hope. Items are rarer than they were meant to be—by design—and I've stepped past my measure by springing those hill traps on high mobs." He touched the staff once, as if to confirm the theft from fate. "While they chase rabbits to keep a line on their stomachs, I'm wearing tomorrow on my back." A dry laugh leaked out of him, two notes only. "Let them skin hares and praise the tutorial gods. I'll keep the scarcity working for me until they learn to bleed stone."
He cinched the last strap and let the cave keep his breath. "One mercy: I sold the old kit and the animal scraps last night—before Balin turned the square into theatre. The old man at the stall is hard to fell; he paid under market on everything and called it charity."
"His ledger, his rules," he said, and recited the arithmetic like an epitaph:
Wolf Pelts ×9 → 1 bronze each → 9 bronze
Wolf Fangs ×33 → 0.2 bronze each → 6 bronze (rounded down)
Wolf Claws ×33 → 0.2 bronze each → 6 bronze
Boar Hide (Medium) ×6 → 2 bronze each → 12 bronze
Boar Tusks ×18 → 1 bronze each → 18 bronze
Boar Bristle Bundle ×4 → 0.5 bronze each → 2 bronze
Piglet Tusks (Small) ×2 → 0.5 bronze each → 1 bronze
Poor Boots — Leather — L1 → 1 bronze
Starter Trousers — Poor Cloth — L1 → 1 bronze
Total: 55 Bronze Coins.
He let the coins clink in his palm and gave the cave a thin smile. "Rounding down, always down—I'm at 60 bronze. Not quite enough for a mansion," he said, almost kind. "But enough to keep the west from hearing me come."
He knelt by the pack and counted without sentiment:
[Hunter's Medium Satchel — Leather — 30 Slots]
[Stored: Initiate's Brooch of the Penumbra ×1]
[Stored: (Misc) Balin Head ×1]
[Stored: Sturdy Trousers — Common Cloth — L1 ×1]
[Stored: Poor Vest — Cloth — L1 ×1]
[Stored: Worn Sandals — Poor Leather — L1 ×1]
[Stored: Raw Boar Meat ×7]
[Stored: Wolf Meat ×4]
[Stored: Bronze Coins ×60] [= 5 + 55]
[Slots Used: 8/30]
He let his fingers rest on the parcel a moment longer, listening to the quiet arithmetic of hunger and time. "Now that I'm off the village's leash, I'll have to cook. Not as if the guards made delicacies, but it saved time." The thought widened. "Grocery clerks, physics undergrads, law students—let's see how they fare when the sky won't open a fridge for them." Survival doesn't begin with courage; it begins with matches, with knowing what not to touch, with patience enough to boil water twice. Most will think the forest is a buffet with atmosphere. It isn't. The first curriculum is fire; the second is discrimination. Identify, separate, refrain. In a catalogue world they learned to select; here they will learn to refuse."The interesting part will be watching who can tell the difference between what is proper and what is poisonous—between meat that looks alive and plants that look innocent. Many deaths wear the colour green."
He sorted his memory of the two. "They killed a snake, almost certainly; Juan will have ticked into Level 2 off that." He could almost see the message blinking over the boy's head while the fear still shook out of his hands. The advantage of having built this flora—beyond the needlework beauty of it, thorned and exact like a rose—is that he knew beforehand where malice slept: the milky sap that burns, the nightshade berries that sell themselves like sweets, the mushrooms that blush the wrong way at the gills, the river reeds that clean and the ones that steal. "The world is readable if you accept that it is not trying to please you." He had written it so that learning would cost less than vanity, and more than curiosity.
He looked down at the habit, black with its new gravity, and allowed himself a small, sideways amusement. "With my culinary reach, we'll keep to monastic food." "Beans are not the end of the world"—he brushed the sleeve, approving and mocking at once—"at least not for me." A pot, a slow burn, a little salt won by honest trade; enough to turn hours into strength. Let others chase sauces; he would settle for quiet fuel and a fire that did not betray him. The west would not care what he ate, only whether he arrived. "The best seasoning for food has always been hunger,"
He buckled Mathis's dagger outside the habit, hilt plain on the belt to his right, a small prophecy for idle eyes. He had no intention of using it. In this world a mage is expected to keep his last defence short and bright; that expectation makes a fine decoy. The left has been training since day one—the sinister kept honest by steel. Let the enemy watch the right for theatre; the draw will come from the left, quiet, oblique, fatal. "Intelligence is the art of saying what one wills while omitting what one desires." The dagger speaks the will. The sword will serve the desire; because the first move is distraction.
Seeing that the dagger is merely a visual decoy, he concludes his strategy: "Since the dagger isn't actually equipped, I gain nothing from it".
He thought of bodies that only train legs: all definition below, the arms of a child. So with men who overtrain prudence and forget bite. Here, the numbers will not mature themselves until the 15 Level; after that, the world adds its own interest—2 skill points at each Level Up, and a passive ripening that thickens every limb because hardship is a tutor that does not specialise. That is called Maturation.
It was not an accident; He wrote it that way. Early play is a choke point by design: from levels 1–14 nothing grows unless you pay for it, so you must choose a lane and live in it. At Level 15 the locks ease—Maturation turns on, and your secondary attributes begin to pick up points from what you actually do, while the +2 Skill Points keep your declared path sharp. Possibilities are withheld first so that a path is chosen; then they are returned so that the choice can breathe. A child is not handed adult tools; he is given a bounded yard to become what he must be. When he reaches his majority, the fences move, and freedom arrives with shape already set. By then a man is expected to have declared a path, if not a class—Devir grants no shortcuts; it rewards decisions that hold. "A warrior is only a warrior if he wins wars," he told the cave, and the cave agreed by saying nothing.
He added, as if explaining to a pupil who could not see the board: "Maturation does not only feed the limbs—it counts for expertise. Until then, only the last strike adds to your craft: the finisher's privilege. Swing ten times, land nine, miss the kill, and the ledger writes nothing. But when the world begins to mature you, every attempt weighs. The shaft loosed, the feint tried, the parry held an inch too short—all of it tallies. Training swings in an empty yard, even. Not as much as the kill, but enough to season the hand."
He added, as if explaining to a pupil who could not see the board: "Maturation does not only feed the limbs—it counts for expertise. Until then, only the last strike adds to your craft: the finisher's privilege. Swing ten times, land nine, miss the kill, and the ledger writes nothing. But when the world begins to mature you, every attempt weighs. The shaft loosed, the feint tried, the parry held an inch too short—all of it tallies. Training swings in an empty yard, even. Not as much as the kill, but enough to season the hand."
After Level 15, the world stops pretending you are only what you finish with the Last Hit and begins to count what you practice: before Level 15, Proficiency comes only from the Last Hit, and only for the arm or art that dealt the kill; after Level 15, Maturation turns on and Proficiencyaccrues—less than a kill, but real—from clean intermediate strikes, defended or feinted actions, and even sustained drills; Proficiency also increases through solitary training, requiring nothing more than practising the technique in question. The delay is deliberate: the boon is withheld to force a lane; by the time you cross Level 15, your path should already be chosen.
He let a dry laugh out of one side of his mouth. "Mono players, hehehe… They'll grind one weapon to milk every drop of early proficiency, and by the time maturity sets in, their habits are welded shut. A sword only, a bow only, a staff only. Fools. They'll know too late what the bonus was for, and they'll never use it to become polymaths of death."
Most won't walk through. Habit calcifies; the UI will show the numbers, but the muscles won't listen. They'll treat the bonus as a higher ceiling on the same narrow hallway. The few will do otherwise: keep excellence in their line and spend the new breadth to annex a second language of killing—off-hand draws, footwork, terrain, improvised tools. Not sloppy generalists; disciplined specialists who learn to grow edges.
A general hardening. Draw steel and sever an orc's neck and you train more than the hand; the whole frame learns the pull. A sage who keeps moving in bad country earns a little DEX the way a hill earns wind. An archer finds he needed INT to choose a proper target before he needed strength to loose.
"Inherited skills first," he told himself. Ranks run C, B, A, S, Z. "Only Rank Z can't be trained—either you roll it at first login or you catch it through a rare in-game event. All other ranks (C, B, A, S) can be trained into you even if you didn't roll them, though a lucky roll just gives you a head start." Rank Z sits at 0.01%—about 1 in 10,000. Perfect Sight is Z. It gives no damage, no armor, no speed—only certainty: exact strength and level readouts on anything living, regardless of masks or fog. Negative in yield, decisive in effect; it adds nothing to the arm, it subtracts ignorance from the mind.
A contrast is easy: a S-rank Sword Gift gives you early crit bias, faster Proficiency, and easier mastery across all blade schools—powerful, but it rivets you to a path you never meant to choose and keeps forcing you toward it from the start. By contrast, Perfect Sight rivets nothing; it leaves every door open while marking which doors have teeth.
He let the thought uncoil until it answered itself. "It's the difference between being beautiful and being intelligent. Beauty is loud credit—doors open, hands grow gentle, the world forgives on sight; the bill arrives later as a leash you didn't notice. Intelligence pays nothing up front—no bread, no banners, no pity—its one mercy is to cancel illusions and teach you to wait. Truth is better than beauty because it doesn't distract; it walks you straight to the point. In the end it teaches that no one is good by nature; one may be, by gift."
Then, he tested the breath, counted the steps it would buy, felt the new current of JP settle like a second pulse under the skin. The hood narrowed the world to a serviceable tunnel; the mask kept his face for himself. He tightened the strap on the greaves, weighed the staff, rehearsed the left-hand draw without music. Outside, the west waited like a debt that does not forget the name on it. He stepped to pay it, and the cave let him go.