Chapter 320: The System Has Balance

The magical circles were actually not all that hard to decipher, once they put an entire Academy worth of the nation’s greatest minds to the task.

The language was simple enough, and phonetic. Once they started to understand it, the System began to fill in the gaps and do the translation for them. That level of assistance made it feel like these might be the most basic of magical assistances, ones that didn’t have to be locked away behind some sort of special magic or cryptic language.

But even so, the amount of text that was necessary to make a spell circle two metres across was enough that the mere thought of replicating it gave most mages a headache.

It was something like trying to rewrite your college entry application into a circle, with diagrams, while making it readable in any order, without a set start or end point. It certainly wasn’t impossible, they had the proof right in front of them. But making a new one was the sort of thing that you could devote years of your life to.

Perhaps as a mage got more powerful, this sort of thing became instinctive, as the warriors quickly gave up on anything resembling researching it, even though some of them were accomplished researchers and linguists in their own right.

So, one day, this might become a skill that they could acquire, but that time was not going to be soon.

On the other hand, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

If you could write out magic, then there were other ways to cast. They could write wards, defensive charms, or even place magical buffs on armour. Layering a defensive spell on like war paint would be an incredible ability for someone to gain.

It didn’t seem like it was impossible, it was just something that none of them knew yet.

Perhaps someone had, along the way, but they hadn’t lived this far through the trials, and that knowledge was lost with them.

It was a tragedy to all of humanity, and Kalli couldn’t help but wonder how many amazing skills had been locked away in a bunker somewhere, then lost at the end of the first trial, because they never got the chance to level up. The plans that the leaders made had been an epic failure when met with the cruel reality of the Trials.

There wasn’t much else that Kalli could do about it, except wait for the mages to decipher the magical circles.

That and find other ways to burn points.

The feeling that she was missing something couldn’t be shaken, but no matter how long she searched through the store, she couldn’t find some huge, expensive item that would explain her need for more points.

She also couldn’t lend them to the others, and she couldn’t buy them anything that would allow them to advance faster. If she could buy skills for others, she would already have half the city capped out. But that simply wasn’t possible.

Now, the only option was to keep improving the city and let the residents figure out the rest for themselves.

That appeared to be the role that the Coordinator had after the early stages when they were struggling to survive. It was a bit of a letdown that her cheat code class didn’t let her simply make herself an overpowered army, but she assumed it was some sort of balance.

Early game utility, traded for late game lack of output. A common mechanic in online games from her past life. However, she still had daily necessities, things that everyone needed, and she was the one that set quests.

That helped far more than anyone would admit.

Because while the quests and store items that she could offer might be lacking for those at the top of the power rankings, they were still driving the growth of the next generation, and keeping the core of the city afloat.

As long as she could get enough people access to the system, it might not matter if they didn’t have many at the peak of whatever the system would allow.

Kalli was currently level fifteen, and there were a few heroes at level eighteen. But the next logical transition point would be level twenty. If they could get at least one member there, they would find out if that was what it took to call them ready for ascension.

What she really needed was one more dungeon.

If they had a level fifteen dungeon, they could push heroes all the way up to level twenty in short order. But the Ogre Dungeon was simply too low to make good experience progress, and the daily quests didn’t give much in relation to what was needed.

Perhaps it was just a change in pace?

But with all the changes, there were a few things that had managed to get overlooked. The largest among them was the nature of the Awakened themselves.

Edna Hildebrandt, an elderly survivor from the Arks, had been among the first to awaken at level 1 as a Cleric, without doing a dungeon. Now, that wasn’t much of an accomplishment, others had done it as well.

But the real point of interest was not that a ninety year old cleric existed, it was the fact that the old woman was looking younger by the day.

She spent her time in one of the district 1 clinics in the under city, assisting the healing pods, and chatting happily to the ill and injured. It was a perfect post for her, being elderly and widowed, with her surviving children and grandchildren busy working.

But every day, she was a bit more energetic, a bit straighter standing, and now others were noticing that she was becoming noticeably younger.

Sure, she was still ancient, but her hair was gaining back streaks of her natural brown, and the wrinkles on her face were fading. If anyone had to answer, they would say that she was in her seventies, not her nineties, and she had just reached level three.

With almost all the other heroes being under thirty, there was no visible difference. They were already in the prime of their lives.

But for Edna, it was a new lease on life.