+235 xp!

“What does that mean?”

“XP lets you buy levels, which are a sort of…I have no idea how to explain levels to someone who’s never played a game involving them. Uh, level increases are how you represent someone becoming more powerful, basically.”

“Oh. So we got xp just now because…?”

“Uh, because we defeated an enemy, basically. I assume. I got one xp earlier in a timeline I threw away, for squishing a bug that turned out to belong to Deskari.”

“Hmm. In real life, you get stronger by taking risks…fighting is the easiest way to do that,” she says sadly, “but you don’t have to.”

“I suspect we’re going to have to fight a lot of things anyway. Just because of all the demons.”

“I wish you were wrong.”

“But hey, putting that guy to sleep counted! We didn’t actually have to hurt them!”

“That is good.”

Let’s see, level 2 of Arcanist costs 400 xp; she can’t afford it right this minute but she will be able to if Ember sleeps another demon of equivalent strength to that one.

Ooooorrrr, she could buy level 1 of Athlete right now. It’s probably not a good idea to buy level 1 of everything before level 2 of anything, but, and this is critical, Athlete gives the most hit points. Which increases her ability to not die to random misfired crossbow bolts.

And she hasn’t actually cast any spells, yet, in any timeline that she’s kept. Which means that so far HP are objectively more useful than MP. And then she can save the rest of the XP she just got for level 2 of something else.

She purchases level 1 of Athlete.

Your level has increased by 1!
+5 Attribute points!
+10 HP
+1 SP
+1 MP
Would you like to unlock a random class?
[Yes][No]

…Huh.

She selects [Yes].

New Class Available: Blademaster
+5 HP
+25 SP
+2 MP
Level 1 Ability: I Studied The Blade: Add +1 to the effective level of all edged weapon use skills

…Oh that’s quite good. Well. Relatively speaking. She hasn’t seen enough classes yet to have a really solid grasp of class quality, but this seems good so far.

Also if she unlocks a new class every time she levels up she could theoretically go on just buying the first levels of different classes indefinitely. Probably she should not do that. But she could.

It wouldn’t even help that much to take this class because she doesn’t have any edged weapon skills yet. She should…maybe fix that. Or pick up some kind of weapon skill, anyway, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a blade, although the fact that she’s already unlocked the Blademaster class makes blades more appealing than they would be otherwise.

The next time they run across a corpse—Lucy didn’t even pick up all the ones that were in the square when she was trying to get the oil of shrink item, and there have been new ones made since then—she checks it for weapons and finds a dagger.

“Save game.”

“Hm?”

“Oh, well, I just leveled up, and also found a dagger, and nothing bad has happened,” that she’s aware of, “since the last time I saved, so.”

Nod.