[NR] Theorizing The Source - Chapter 732

Jason taps a clay stylus on his temple as he looks down at a clay tablet. “Okay, first up, Sustained Effort to mirror any stat gains to my lowest stat. If I can’t get anything else, that is the key passive talent to ask for.

“After that, I want basically body cultivation talents. Though we slightly disagree on this. Bones first was obvious enough. However, you suggest skin next to test how it stacks with my cultivation and I’m partial to something for my muscles.”

Rosha, “And I suggested an all-around body talent!”

Jason nods, “And you did suggest that. Though me and Courtney generally agree that individual buffs get more bang for my buck. However, an all-around talent would be useful, depending on how limited my talent slots are.”

Courtney, “And there should be a limit. Everything I found on monster breeding seems to indicate that for regular monsters, the slots vary between one and five. While the rarer and more innately powerful monsters can fit more, the highest known being ten slots. Though that wasn’t on a player’s pet, but rather a kingdom’s protector beast. A legendary Kirin. Which, fair enough.”

Jason, “That does bring up a question. Presumably, someone has managed to unlock passive talents if you’re suggesting it. Do we have information on the limits there?”

Courtney, “Low. Especially for anyone who has adjusted how much experience they get. Which points towards your having an above-average number of slots. I don’t have many analysts under me, but they agree that passive talents likely work off of Raw experience. Which means that those who require more experience to level will have more space to fit talent.”

Jason, “Wouldn’t that mean the opposite for me?”

Courtney shakes her head, “I’ve run it past them, since what you’ve done isn’t exactly a secret technique or anything. Though most don’t take it to the extreme you have and I didn’t tell them. Anyway, remember, passive talents use RAW experience. Not filtered experience.

“Which for you means it will take out of your experience before the filter. If anything, you might be forced to take more of them to actually affect your leveling speed. The early ones taking purely from the unused experience you normally filter away.”

Jason, “Wait, the whole point of my filtering my experience is because I do not want what is being filtered.”

Courtney shakes her head, “You aren’t the first to try and filter things out of your gained experience either. The power used in talents and a few other functions seems to get broken down, removing all intent from it.”

Jason, “Well that’s good to know. Why not use that to level?”

Courtney, “Without the intent, it doesn’t provide levels. What you’ve filtered for might be exactly the stuff someone else is trying their hardest to avoid. It is generally accepted that this sort of system was added by the System to prevent someone figuring out how to mainline the power for free levels. Though I must admit, this isn’t my theory.”

Jason squeezes his eyes shut, “Well, that’s as good of an explanation as any. I’d guess the actual reality is the experience is reduced to some sort of more primal power, which the System prevents us from even seeing.”

Rosha, “What about the whole thing with the System making everything with Energy? You seemed pretty sure of that.”

Jason, “Meh, the System might have made everything, but it isn’t omnipotent, omnipresent, or omniscience. It likely used Energy as the base because that is what it could use. That’s the whole trope with cultivation stories, right? There is always a higher heaven.”

Courtney sighs, “I’m more of a mind that it still uses experience and this is all smoke and mirrors.”

Rosha, “Smoke and mirrors? That’s your personal theory?”

Courtney nods, “Experience is a natural part of this place. So, it wouldn’t be strange for beasts to develop methods to make use of the stuff in a natural fashion. A method that doesn’t suffer from the penalties resulting from the artificial System-sourced levels.”

Jason slow blinks. “Okay. That, that I can get behind. Though I have to ask, why would talents advance with levels if they’re an alternate system?”

Courtney, “Correlation does not imply causation. In this case, they grow at the same pace simply because they grow using the same source. Experience.

“In fact, if it wasn’t for levels and skills, I bet every monster would have passive talents. Maybe even the various abilities we know the monsters for might end up being talents instead of skills.”

Jason, “That would be an interesting system. Everyone has a bunch of intrinsic that grow and evolve without specific skills for stuff like using a sword. I wonder how people would have adjusted to it?”

Courtney waves that away, “They might not have even developed in the first place. Remember, the System did create everything. Most likely, passive talents were developed by monsters to keep up with the fact the sapient races easily gained skills for stuff like sword use.

“Without that outside pressure, things would likely have developed more like irl. Well, except for some magical abilities floating around. Plus, without the System, you wouldn’t know about it, anyway. After all, the System is what provides the status panels for us.

“Basically, everything is wrapped up in a Catch-22. So much so that any guesses would be highly inaccurate. Even if you removed levels and skills right now? There is no way to tell how things would develop.

“Now, how do you plan to get in contact with your ‘in’ with the System? That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can do with a message.”

Jason shrugs, “Knowing the right name and meditation. It can be shocking how easy it is to contact cosmic entities when they already know of you. And sometimes when they don’t. Though the second one tends to be at the summoner’s expense. All those complex rituals and such you see to summon stuff on is needed because you’re not summoning something strong enough or there are pre-existing deals in place guarding your realm to prevent such things from easily happening.

“And you’re not summoning something strong enough. Really, if you reach high enough, anything is possible. Offset simply by the fact that after a certain level of power difference, they won’t bother answering you.”