The Arcade Series

The next several minutes were enlightening to say the least. While I didn't get any detailed information on why and how the system works or any of that, I did get the next best thing. Information on how I could use the system, and what everything does. It was like a professional gamers' knowledge was inserted into my mind, making me learn a hell of a lot about the Leveling System of this world.

Most of what I learned just confirmed some of my own thoughts about how the system worked, like Strength increasing muscle mass and Dexterity strengthening the connection from the mind to the body, but there were some unknowns that had been answered. Like how classes including subclasses work, how experience is calculated and how the experience needed to level up increases as the users level up. I started by looking at how experience is calculated first, but it was honestly pretty simple.

You take the level of the monster that you killed, divide that number by your level, then multiply that number by the total experience needed to level up from the monster's level when it was killed, divided by the monster's level, then you get the amount of experience you earned. You could simplify that into (ML (Monster level) ÷ UL (User level)) x (EL (Experience needed to level up from the monsters current level) ÷ ML) = Total Experience Gained. Though maybe to some people that would make even less sense then the words. All in all, the calculation makes it so the user gains more experience when killing higher level monsters and gains less experience when killing lower level monsters.

I moved onto trying to understand how the experience needed to level up increases next and I frowned in confusion. This was the weirdest system ever.

To put how it works in simple terms, in level one through ten you basically multiply the level by ten and you get the amount of experience needed to level up from there. But when you hit level ten through twenty things get weird. The amount of experience needed for level ten makes sense, a good even one hundred. Then level eleven is two hundred. Then three hundred for the next level. It increases by a hundred all the way up until level nineteen and twenty. The system called what happens there a plateau, which means that both level nineteen and twenty are a thousand experience points each.

After that point the system picks right back off by adding a thousand experience every level after that point until we hit the next plateau of ten thousand experience at level twenty nine and thirty when it then increases the experience total by ten thousand per level.

This pattern increases forever, with the amount of experience needed goes up by a factor of ten, meaning that by the level forty nine and fifty plateau it increases the amount of experience needed to level up by a million each level. One million. This system is broken by how much its experience goes up by.

Of course with that amount of increase in experience needed to level up, the amount of experience gained by killing the higher level monsters goes right along with it, meaning it all kind of evens out until you run out of higher level monsters to kill, then you basically can't level up anymore. A theoretically infinite leveling system that is in practice extremely limited because of the availability of higher level things. So depending on how rare higher level monsters are, the levels in this world could be limited from anywhere to the fifties to the hundreds as far as I could tell.

It kind of made sense from a certain stand point, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it's weird as hell compared to most videogame or fictional systems back on Earth.

But confusion about overly convoluted and weird system details aside, I moved onto the more prominent information that I had received and I went over the information on subclasses, Main Classes and the Evolution Program.

Now this system made a lot more sense. To start with, the details on how classes operate is not to actually increase any of the skills or abilities mentioned in the description but it is actually a description of what the class could give in terms of skills and determine where stat points should go. For example if someone had a pyromancer class they would most likely get skills related to fire as they earn skills, and they would get more stat points in Mana or Willpower. What I got from that was the class itself is more of a guide for the system then anything that actually increases power in itself.

Then I looked over the information on the grading system and I found that my thoughts on classes being a guide and not giving power weren't exactly true. There are seven grades of class, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Ultra Rare, Legendary, Mythical and finally Divine. The class grades controlled the grade of skills that are earned and each grade of class gave a different number of stat points that are earned per level. For example, a Common Main Class can only give Common skills every ten levels and five stat points per level, and a Legendary class can give skills of all grades up to Legendary every ten levels and ten stat points per level.

That's what I meant when I said I was wrong about classes only acting as a system guide and not something that increases power itself. Classes of higher grade make people stronger than people with a lower grade class by quite a bit. I currently have two times the amount of stat points as someone with a Common class at the same level, and have the same amount of stat points as someone with said class two times my level.

Classes and their accompanying grades control quality and power in their entirety.

But if you had a bad initial class grade, there is a way to catch up to higher grades as you level up. The Class Evolution Program.

If you have noticed that I haven't mentioned subclasses yet, this is the reason. Subclasses were designed to be used for the Class Evolution Program, and not just used alongside the Main Class. You see, the grade of a class works off of a Worth amount. What Worth really represents is complicated, but basically it means that different grades have a different amount of Worth Points that make the grade what it is. One point for a Common class, two points for Uncommon, six points for Rare, twenty four for Ultra Rare, a hundred and twenty for Legendary, seven hundred and twenty for Mythical and five thousand forty for Divine.

It scales fast, I know. It's not as bad as the experience though, so I am glad for that.

All that summed up, basically to level up your class to a higher grade, you need more Worth Points to put in the class. This is where subclasses and the Class Evolution Program comes in.

The Class Evolution Program has two options to increase the classes Worth Points, sacrifice a subclass to either evolve or merge with a Main Class. If you sacrifice a subclass to evolve a Main Class, the program takes the subclass and takes the Worth Points that the class has and puts it directly into the Main Class and increasing its Worth. But if you sacrifice a subclass to merge with a Main Class, the program takes the subclass and merges the attributes of the subclass along with its Worth to make a new Main Class. It was an interesting program.

Then I learned more about subclasses in general and I let out a grimace. The Secondary Class can be gained every ten levels if you don't keep it, but because of the fact that makes it more available then the Tertiary Class it makes the classes Worth decrease by half of whatever Worth the grade is normally worth. But that's not the end of it either as because the Worth is less, the stats decrease by roughly a third as well and you can only get skills from the subclass that are one grade less then the Secondary Classes grade.

So basically, it's mostly useless and is probably only used to fuel the Main Class every ten levels by most people.

The Tertiary Class is somewhat different however, as it only unlocks every fifty levels making it much harder to get and therefore increasing its Worth in return. Opposite to the Secondary Class, the Worth Points of a Tertiary Class is double the normal grade’s Worth Points and making it more valuable. The Tertiary Classes stat total also increases by a third and you can get skills at the classes grade on top of that.

Considering if I would keep the Tertiary Class or not is not a decision for right now however, as I need to decide what I am doing with my Secondary Class now.

I have three options here. I could keep the subclass and use it to accumulate stat points and a few more skills. I could use the subclass to evolve my Main Class and hope that I give it enough Worth Points to get my class from Legendary to Mythical before the invasion is here, and then make use of the new grade to upgrade my abilities. The last option I had was to merge my subclass with my Main Class, probably ending up with a fire specialized Main Class while also giving it more Worth Points, meaning I would be basically doing the same thing as evolving my subclass but I change my Main Class a bit.

Before I made any decisions however, I needed to do some math to find out when I would end up upgrading my Main Class if I sacrifice all my subclasses when I unlock them. First off, my class currently has a hundred and twenty Worth Points as it is Legendary and is therefore six hundred points away from Mythical. Sacrificing my Secondary Class would give my Main Class sixty Worth Points, as that is half of what Legendary grade is normally worth. That means if I was to sacrifice ten Legendary Secondary Classes I would be able to upgrade my Legendary into a Mythical by level one hundred. If I sacrifice a Legendary Tertiary Class alongside the Secondary Classes every ten levels however, because it would give two hundred and forty Worth Points, I would be able to upgrade my class to Mythical by level sixty.

The next question would be if it was possible to level up to level seventy before the invasion happens. Seventy because I needed to be able to use the upgrade to get more stats and a new Mythical skill after I upgraded the class. But in all honesty there were too many unknowns. I didn't know if the town's dungeon would have enough high level mobs to let me get to that level fast enough, I didn't know if I would be able to grow my combat ability enough to actually kill the mobs with a decent rate, I didn't even know when the invasion was supposed to arrive at our gates. All in all, taking the path to sacrifice my subclasses was a huge gamble.

But that gamble might be worth it. Mythical classes and skills were no joke according to my system knowledge. Twenty stat points per level. Skills that could potentially obliterate a large island in minutes. Not that skills like that would be very useful in the invasion of a town, but it was the premise that matters.

I am going all in. I was always a little bit of a gambler. I just hope I am making the right call with this. Level seventy Mythical class here I come. Liches beware.

From here I still have one choice to make, though one of less importance. Should I merge or evolve my Combat Sorcerer of the Dungeon Class with my Living Inferno class? Predicting the results of merging classes is extremely difficult according to my new knowledge and the results are slightly randomized. There is even a career for people to study how the merging works and try to accurately predict the results of class mergers. But as far as I can see there are two main results in this case.

Either my class goes from a Sorcerer base to an Elementalist base, or a fire based magic base. Because my class has three different base concepts, Combat, Sorcerer and my Dungeon Core, the merge would affect those base concepts to some level. So the Sorcerer concept would be the one altered most because the Secondary Living Inferno class is magic based, and it would take on or specialize on the specific fire or elemental aspects instead of the catch all Sorcerer base.

The question from here is whether specializing my class for fire magic would be better or worse then my current mostly unspecialized class. Basically the question is if I wanted to focus on fire magic instead of all the elements and general magic. Specializing would increase power and ability to control fire if I am guessing right. But the master of all path would end up more rounded and possibly more powerful overall.

My choice was made a few seconds after I thought that. Master of all over specialization. I would evolve my class, not merge it. Maybe I won't do that in the future, but this is my decision in this case. I used the Class Evolution Program and entered in my choice, making some changes on my status screen.

Native Universal Leveling System #273 Status

Level: 17

EXP: 127/800

Native Universal Leveling System #273 Skills: Active Mana Transmutation (Uncommon)

Main Class: Combat Sorcerer of the Dungeon (Legendary: 60/600):

You have used freeform magic in combination with your own hands, using the abilities of a dungeon core to amplify your effectiveness in combat.

+2 intelligence, +1 willpower, +2 mana, +1 strength, +1 dexterity and +3 Free Stat Points, Per level

Secondary Class: Locked until level 20

Tertiary Class: Locked until level 50

The system showed the progress I had with evolving my Main Class to Mythical, and my Secondary Class slot was empty once again.

‘Now… What was I supposed to do next? I think I finished everything I needed to do with the system, so… back to work in the Arcade?’ I thought to myself, a little disappointed but satisfied with my work.

It was as I sighed and relaxed after all my mental exercise with my systems that the door swung open with the chime of a bell and a few dozen people with armour and weapons walked inside the Arcade curiously.