When the initial rush of loot adrenaline subsided, he took a moment to reconsider.  He had focused all of his attribute points on Strength and Stamina before that day.  With his current stats, the spell would be wasted on him.  Better to find someone with high Intelligence and Will Power and give it to them.

But what if that person didn’t make it?  Was it smart to potentially waste a valuable scroll on a practical stranger who might die tomorrow in the forest, or next week from some low-level monster?  Maybe it was smarter to just hold onto it for now.

Thinking again about using it himself, he pulled up his stats.  He’d started with a reasonably high (for a human) score of five in Intelligence on day one.  And though his focus had been on developing his Strength and Stamina, raising each by a point through hard work, and assigning one free attribute point to each to bring them up to fours, Intelligence was still his highest stat, other than Adaptability, which was at six.  He’d also put one point in Constitution after seeing his father’s health pool go way up when he’d raised that skill.

He began to think about scale.  When it came to humans, and how they performed within the Collective’s stat-based system, how good was an Intelligence of five?  He and his father had figured out that a four in Strength was roughly twice the human norm.  Did that mean his five in Intelligence made him two times smarter than the average bear?  He didn’t think so. And his Will Power score was still a three.  So if he elected to go with a caster build, he’d need to raise that.

If he were honest with himself, his starting stats had favored a caster build, to begin with.  He’d followed his father in developing his more physical aspects because the twos that he started with had seemed pitiful at the time.  It was also a simple and clear way to test out ways to improve himself.

Tempted to spend his three remaining points to raise his Will Power and Intelligence, he decided to hold off.  He put the scroll away and leaned his back against the wall.  Despite his extended nap earlier, it wasn’t long before he fell asleep once again.

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

No Place Like Home

Morning brought a bustle of activity.  The group gathered all their supplies and prepared to set out for town.  There was a brief discussion of staying in the caves, since nothing else had tried to attack during the night.   But the arguments of the previous evening held, and none of the men who’d led the titan away had shown up.  So the group set out.