The following day, Lenny was exhausted. He could feel it in his bones. He'd tried to do his chores as usual but found himself distracted and unmotivated, unable to concentrate on a simple task for more than a few minutes. In the end, Harry helped him finish his cleaning duties after his own chores and a few hours later, they retired to the backroom.
Although he wanted to sleep, Lenny knew he still had a couple of things to do. He checked out the stats tab first.
"Name: Lenny Hope. Ability: Transmogrification. Strength: 13. Speed: 10. Stamina: 7 of 10. Perception: 5. Spirit: 12. Health: 10. Two stat points are currently available, do you wish to allocate them?"
Lenny was unsurprised at his diminished stamina. No wonder he felt so exhausted. He was tempted to put both points into the stat to give himself more energy but based on how increasing his strength previously had gone, he thought it was likely to make him feel worse, at least in the short term.
He considered for a moment. Maybe he should continue to put all of his stats into strength? That way, he had more chance of taking out an enemy with the first strike. However, doing so was reckless, as he would not always have the chance to ambush his opponents from behind. Besides, he doubted it would have been enough anyway. Not to take out a prey tier beast. Also, there was no point having a powerful swing that couldn't hit its target. Maybe he should put both points into speed instead then? That seemed like a good choice, but he was aware that one of the most respected local factions, les Chevaliers, were masters of a single aspect and that had worked out well for them. Other factions often took more of a mixed approach, choosing spirit armours that enhanced a range of stats, but les Chevaliers were considered elite melee fighters even among the elites. This was partly as their abilities mostly enhanced a physical aspect, but even so, when they spoke about fighting, others were inclined to listen.
After changing his mind several times, he decided to place one stat into strength and one into speed. This seemed like a good compromise, still specialising in strength, but ensuring he had sufficient speed to go with it. He had thought up an excuse to leave the room, but in the end, no one asked.
He found a spot in a backstreet behind the church, a dumpster tucked away in a corner that would hide his body from any passersby. He sat on the concrete and prepared himself once again. Allocating the stats, his body clenched up all over. It was like a snake, attempting to squeeze its prey to death, only the snake was his own muscles. He'd managed to stifle his voice, not crying out in pain, but the experience was horrendous. Overtime, he would need to be able to perform this action discretely, so he figured he would start practicing sooner rather than later.
"Name: Lenny Hope. Ability: Transmogrification. Strength: 7 of 14. Speed: 5 of 11—"
He dismissed the stats screen and the voice stopped. Had he made the right choice? Who knew? What he really wanted to do was taken on a couple of scavenger tier beasts, ideally one at a time, with some rest in between and use them to slowly build up his stats overtime, but that's not how portals worked. There was never a single beast, always many.
He had one more important thing to check. Something he had only recently unlocked and been curious about all day: the enhancements tab. Bringing up the screen, he spotted only a couple of options in white text and a few more in grey.
There was also a little 'i' icon with a circle around it. He was vaguely aware that such a thing was used to indicate further information at public kiosks. He simply thought about selecting the button and some new text appeared on screen, read out by the system.
"Enhancements tab. Select an item from the enhancements tab to find out more information about it. Those in white can be made at the current ability level, if the necessary resources are acquired. Those greyed out are not yet available, but future upgrades that are not too far away. Keep increasing your spirit stat to unlock more options."
Lenny closed the screen and looked at the couple of options that were available to him first. The first option was steel bone plating. He clicked on it and a 3d representation of his body came up. It was amazing, as he was able to turn the model just by thinking about it, and it seemed anatomically correct, giving him a sort of x-ray vision of himself from a third-person view. Certain areas of the body could be selected, like different sections of his arms or legs, but others, like his skull and ribs could not.
"System, why can I only select certain parts for this enhancement?"
"As the complexity of the parts increase, the essence control required to create them increases also. Why do you think you could only produce a crude brittle dagger?"
"So, are you saying that if I increase my spirit essence, I'll not only be able to produce higher tier weapons, but also better implementations of lower tier ones?"
"Yes, but you are a long way off crafting weapons of the same calibre as talented forgers."
"Yes would have been enough," he thought. He looked at the various parts which could be enhanced. He was surprised to see that each part selected had a little stat adjustment next to it. Each appeared to increase the health stat, but potentially decrease another stat by some amount also. The number of spirit cores and steel required was also different. He kept flicking through the options, trying to work out why the health increases were not consistent, or seemingly related to the stamina or speed decreases, or even the cost to make.
"Why would steel plating my femur take so much essence, and provide a minus 2 to my stamina, yet only provide a health enhancement of 3?"
"The femur is already strong and not as statistically likely of being attacked. In terms of cost, the bone is large and would require a significant amount of plating. Steel plating is heavy and will tire the user overtime, reducing their stamina. Although there is also a slight speed reduction, it would not account for a whole stat point and the system displays in integer type in the UI."
It turned out the health stat was more complicated than he first thought. Taking into consideration different statistical likelihoods, it speculated about the overall combat effectiveness of a certain part, yet in reality providing him no extra resilience if struck somewhere else that was unenhanced, like his skull.
After carefully looking through all the options, it appeared his left lower arm provided the best trade-off between stamina and health. This surprised him, but thinking about it, most people were right-handed, meaning that, at least as far as human opponents went, he was far more likely to defend powerful strikes from this side. He was also more likely to parry or hold a shield with it, and it had been both broken with a hammer and slashed by a claw in the last few weeks alone.
He looked through the other enhancement available at his current level, a kind of muscle stimulator which would increase the contraction strength of a particular muscle, giving him a plus 1 in both or either of the speed and strength stats. This intrigued him for a moment, as there appeared to be no downside, but ultimately, he thought survival was key. He left the greyed-out options for later, as they sounded intriguing, but were ultimately speculative.
The more he thought about it, though, the more he considered his health` essential. Even with a small decrease to his stamina, it was well worth it. There was a requirement of only two scavenger tier crystals and around 500 grams of steel. This got him wondering if a lighter and stronger material, like titanium, would be able to be used for bone plating without the same draw back. Perhaps titanium bones would be even better than natural ones? Lenny lacked an understanding of the trade-offs between different material properties, though, so might have been surprised to see that titanium alloy was a great choice for bones, offering high tensile and compressive strengths at remarkably low weights, yet simply using unadulterated titanium for plating would have proved less durable than bone, due to its brittle nature. While steel was tougher, it paled in comparison to some of the newer, more expensive Spirit Tech alloys.
Re-reading the material requirement, he did wonder where he would find another core. He didn't want to go out again to another portal. He'd survived too many times through a combination of luck and timing. He was tired of hanging on by the skin of his teeth and knew that if he kept pushes things in this way, sooner or later, his luck would run out. He needed to somehow get the crystal without putting himself or others in danger.